


Rottweiler

by Accidentallytechohazardous



Category: Bleach
Genre: Developing Relationship, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Post-Canon, Rare Pairings, Slow Burn, Trans Male Character, no therapists in soul society we cope like shinigami
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 11:54:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30021381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Accidentallytechohazardous/pseuds/Accidentallytechohazardous
Summary: Renji would love if he could stop getting crushes on people who are completely unobtainable. And it would be just super if he could go on one date with a guy without falling head-over-heels. But Renji develops attachment issues like Ichigo develops new powers, so there's not much to be done.And who is Renji's one true love of the week? The grumpy, shouty, surprisingly sweet half-hollow captain who is also one of his close friend's boss? Neat.
Relationships: Abarai Renji/Muguruma Kensei, Hisagi Shuuhei/Kira Izuru
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	Rottweiler

In a fight, the winner is often not the strongest, but rather the most adaptable. Renji tries to take this philosophy with him and apply it wherever possible. Even when he has no idea what the fuck is going on, it’s better to pretend he does. 

“Okay, so I’m gonna use these five land cards,” he announces, feeling like he’s talking too slow, but if he rushed through his thoughts he’d definitely screw up. There are already, like, a hundred rules and qualifiers to remember, he has ample opportunity to make mistakes. His large hands fumble with the thin cards in his hands, selecting one and sliding it across the table. “And summon Spawn of Mayhem, and use it to attack--”

“You can’t attack with him yet.” Rukia interjects. “Since you just summoned Spawn of Mayhem, you have to wait until the next turn when he’s untapped.”

_ Don’t get frustrated, don’t get frustrated.  _ Renji squints at the layout before him, and wishes for the tenth time that Ichigo had never lent Rukia these stupid cards. Or taught her the stupid rules. 

He would be less irritated if Rukia could just teach him how to play in private, where he could ask as many questions and mess up as much as he wanted. But unfortunately they’ve amassed a small crowd. Rangiku, Momo, Izuru and Shuuhei watch the unfolding carnage with the intense focus of people watching brain surgery be performed. 

“Fine, then I’m going to attack with Duskwalker.” Renji slides his chosen card forward.

“I block with Briarberry Cohort.” 

A spark of satisfaction brings a smirk to Renji’s face. “But my Black Moon enchantment adds plus one to Duskwalker’s attack and defense. Two attack beats your one defense!”

He hears Rangiku inhale, her expression one of uncharacteristic, cat-like focus. Momo’s brows furrow while she chews on her nails, while Shuuhei mutters something about Sun Tzu’s  _ Art of War _ into Izuru’s ear.

Rukia glares over the cards in her hand at Renji, and he knows that he’s not getting an easy out of this. She may act cool and composed, but underneath it Rukia is just as competitive and petty as Renji is. This is a duel to the death, and Rukia is holding the knife to his throat. 

“You’re forgetting that Briarberry Cohort gets a plus one attack and defense because I control another blue creature on the map.” She says cooly. “And my Steel of Godhead aura gives it another plus one.” 

She’s right, of course. Renji squints at the cards set across the table in front of Rukia. She has, like, ten cards on her side, is Renji supposed to be able to remember what all of them do at once? 

**_Don’t_ ** _ get frustrated. _

“Do you want to end your turn here?” Rukia prompts, because of course the answer is a resounding ‘NO’ but he doesn’t see anything else he can do. So it has to be yes.

“Alright, I attack with Lady Sun.” She indicates the card she’s chosen with her fingernail. “Can you defend?”

“You know I can’t.” Renji sighs, looking over all his tapped creature cards.

Momo picks up the notepad they had been using to keep score and taps her pen against the page. “Okay, so Renji takes 2 damage…” She looks up with a broad grin. “Kuchiki-san wins.” 

“Yay, Rukia-chan!” Rangiku cheers and clutches Rukia’s shoulder. Izuru and Shuuhei look vaguely disappointed, which Renji chalks up to the fact that they wanted to watch the match go on longer and  _ not _ due to the fact that Renji was thoroughly beaten.

“Good game!” Rukia holds her hand out to him. She’s holding back her pleasure at her victory, behaving well so Renji won’t feel too bad. He can imagine she was probably just as frustrated the first time she tried to play, so her satisfaction is a symptom of her own growth rather than his failure. “That was really good for your first match.”

Renji takes her hand and attempts to not out too hard. Just enough to be kind of cute instead of pathetic. “Thanks. So much for beginner’s luck, though.” 

It’s just a kids game, after all. Even if it was kind of maddening to jump in feet-first, needing to have the basic rules explained to him over and over just to figure out what was going on, making one mistake after the other only to realize his misstep right after. 

Hmm. Why did that sound so familiar?

Not that having a small audience helped. His friends gathered around, watching him fail over and over. He feels stupid, and feeling stupid makes him angry. And being angry makes him feel… bad. 

“What’d you say this game was called again?”

“Magic: the Gathering. Here, Ichigo gave me all his old cards. Now that you know how to play, you can build your own deck and we can have a rematch later.” Rukia quickly began dividing the wealth of cards into neat piles, her small and clever hands shuffling them easily. “Does anyone else want some? We could have our own league.”

Momo and Rangiku volunteer eagerly, and even Shuuhei shows some interest. Izuru turns her down, “I think I’d probably enjoy watching more than playing.” 

Which is just fantastic. The only thing Renji needs is even more people who are smarter than him to lose to. 

Unless he doesn’t. Renji picks up one of the cards from the Black deck Rukia set up for him. He’ll just have to do what he always does; practice, practice, practice.

* * *

  
  


Renji’s anger issues were, coincidentally, diagnosed the same year he started formal education. He wasn’t aware Shin’o Academy even had a guidance department until a man who introduced himself as a counselor ambushed him after class. 

The counselor sat Renji down in his office, hands folded on top of his desk, and gently told him, “Abarai-san, your enthusiasm is appreciated. However, some of your instructors and peers have described your behavior as… disturbing.” 

He said this with an expression that Renji recognized as an ample combination of condescension and fear. Approaching him, as most adults did, like a wild animal. Unpredictable, impulsive, and untrained.

This, to Renji, was an annoying and confusing topic for a lecture. He could recognize that he was unpopular with his teachers, most of his peers, and the majority of people he tried to meet. It was more surprising that Izuru and Momo could tolerate him at all, let alone be friends with him. 

(The timing was exceptionally bad, as Renji had been even more temperamental and irritable lately. Whether this was related to any particular student’s recent adoption and graduation was an unrelated subject.)

Before this interruption, Renji thought he was doing well. Sure, he had inflicted more bruises and sprains in kendo class than necessary, and all the explosions from kidou class were leaving searing burns on the palms of his hands. 

But violence and aggression was hardly the worst he could do, and it helped alleviate some of the suffocating pressure he felt under the roof of his stupid school. The weight of everyone’s eyes following him, searching him for weakness. As long as everyone was scared of him, they couldn’t make him feel inferior. 

“You know when you graduate, your superiors will expect you to be obedient and follow instructions.” The guidance counselor shook him from his spiteful recollections. “It’s best if you learn restraint, or at least direct all that nervous energy into something productive.” 

‘Nervous energy’. That was the only part of that speech Renji liked. Like his anger was an anxious creature that he could just put a leash and muzzle on, cage it up and shut it down. 

* * *

  
  


It was unlike Shuuhei to be late. For anything. Renji once suggested that they get ramen for lunch at the stand shop, and the next day Shuuhei had made reservations. 

However, he had been squirrely ever since he started working on his manuscript, racing all over Soul Society and to the World of the Living for ‘research’. 

Make no mistake-- it was a refreshing change from seeing Shuuhei practically chained to his desk, working for days on end. The way that he would prowl around his office like a caged beast starving for mental stimulation. 

But it did beg the question of how he had convinced Captain Muguruma to let him roam away from the Seireitei so much. Renji felt like if  _ he _ asked his captain for permission to vanish for days at a time, he would get a thorough dressing down at  _ best _ . 

Renji watches the clock on the wall of Shuuhei’s office, half-sitting on the edge of a desk that was almost covered in stacks of paper and color-coded sticky notes. He wonders at what point it was appropriate for him to bail but also late enough that he could justify not going right back to work. 

The door to the hallway clicks before opening, and Renji perks up. “Hisagi?”

That excitement is immediately extinguished when he sees that it isn’t Shuuhei on the other side of that threshold. 

Captain Muguruma stares into the semi-dark room, the poor lighting doing no favors for the lines underneath his eyes and brows furrowed rightly. If Renji had to guess from the slight wrinkles in his haori and the stiff line of his shoulders, he would say that the captain just came off a very irritating paperwork binge. 

“Wrong lieutenant.” He says as his eyes land on Renji, and it takes Renji a moment to realize that he means ‘Not Shuuhei’ instead of being a very strange and hurtful personal judgement. 

Renji folds one arm over his chest, and lifts the other in a kind of half-salute in an noble attempt to be casual. “Hey, um--” Ever the silver tongue, this one. “Sorry, ‘m just waiting for Hisagi.”

“He’s out for a few days.” Muguruma says, and his tone is so plain it’s honestly hard to read. Renji is usually good at picking up condescension or annoyance or impatience. The big three.

More important than that, though, is the news that Shuuhei has fucking bailed on him with no warning, and leaves behind this bitter taste of  abandonment disappointment. And Renji has to remind himself to not (get angry, get angry, get angry) take it personally. 

He must do a shitty job at covering it, because Muguruma kind of sets his jaw at an angle and has this unreadable weight to his usual glare. “Did that brat not tell you he was gonna be gone?” 

“Well,” Renji tilts his head up towards the ceiling, like he can make his irritation slide back down his throat and into his stomach. He holds up one finger like he’s counting on it. “We’ve met on this day every week for, like, two years to train.” A second finger goes up, “Aaand I’m sitting here instead of doing something else. So yeah, he must’ve forgot.” 

A heavy sigh leaves Muguruma, and he enters the room to make beeline for the simple bookshelf pressed up against one of the office walls. 

He mumbles something about that ‘irresponsible kid’, which is objectively hilarious for Renji to hear, as he takes out a hard-covered, split-spine copy of ‘Competitive Bird-watching’. He cracks it open to the back cover that has Shuuhei’s spare key taped to the inside. 

Man, Shuuhei’s gonna be so disappointed about his secret hiding place. Renji grimaces, now an accessory to burglary, as Kensei unlocks the secret drawer to his desk, pulling his secret agenda out from underneath his secret half-empty bottle of whiskey. 

“If anyone asked, I didn’t see you do that.”

“Let’s see what the kid is up to.” Kensei flips through the pages, with an air of someone who has done this a million times. “Looks like today he’s at Urahara’s for an interview.” 

“Oh boy.” 

Shuuhei was a man who believed that the world would be better if everyone told the truth all the time. 

“Yep.” Kensei shut the drawer, erasing his crime. “What’d you need him for, anyway? Submission for the Communication? Somethin’ for that-- what is it, Men’s Association.”

“God no.” Renji answers way too quickly, earning an amused snort from the captain. Funny, he didn’t take Muguruma for someone with a sense of humor. His thin lips twist in a smirk like it doesn’t quite fit right on his face. “Just sparring. We’re supposed to be, ah… ‘fine-tuning’ our bankais. Y’know, working out the kinks. Trying not to blow up the Seireitei.” 

“How is that going for you guys.”

Renji answers in the most honest way he can; a raised hand doing a non-committal wiggly hand-motion. 

“Excellent.” 

Once more, he tries to get a read off of Kensei. Arms folded over his chest, closed off posture. There’s a bit of a glare on his face, but Renji always sees him sort of glaring. Every time Renji has seen him, he always looks at least a little pissed off.

He’s older, but not as old as Shuuhei had made him seem. The shadows on his face are more indicative of exhaustion, rough living, and periodic insomnia. Ichigo once mentioned that he used to wear piercings, and there’s a light scar on his eyebrow where a ring would go. 

Well. The only other place Renji has to go is work. And he might as well work out this ‘nervous energy.’

So he says possibly the worst combination of words a person can say to a captain who is also half-hollow and has biceps like boulders and can probably break Renji’s jaw with a backhand slap. 

“Hey, d’you wanna fight?” 

Muruguma’s brows lift, some of that edge dissipating off his face as surprise takes over. His eyes close, and his shoulders rise in a shrug. 

“Yeah, okay.”

* * *

It’s a very bad match-up. And Renji knows he’s probably going to get his ass kicked in before they’ve even started.

For the moment, he’ll ignore the fact that Muguruma obviously has more combat experience. Usually Renji has the advantage in brute strength, but in this case he wouldn’t bet on himself. 

Zabimaru has the greatest advantage when going head-to-head against an opponent, someone that Renji can overwhelm with raw power and use Zabimaru’s ranged attacks to control the battlefield. 

Muguruma’s ability to literally manipulate the environment is… not ideal. 

_ “Blast ‘em away, Tachikaze! _ ”

Renji’s never fought in a hurricane before, but he thinks this is what it must be like-- the wind ripping at his clothes and hair, the cold air biting into his skin and bringing dry ears to his eyes when it scalds his face. Fighting against Tachikaze is like fighting against instinct, the impulse to get on the ground and cover his head until the storm is over. 

It’s hard to tell if Muguruma is enjoying himself. He has that same kind of hard frown that Shuuhei gets when Renji fights him, all tight and trying to keep a lid in the snarl boiling underneath. He is the only thing that the wind doesn’t touch, the dead center of the storm. 

Renji likes to think that maybe he’s having fun, though. 

(There is a part of Renji that, despite his best efforts, is definitely not having fun. Not as the cold currents of sharp wind swirl around him like tiny, razor-thin blades. He keeps waiting for blood to be drawn, first one cut and then a thousand. To see his blood smeared on the ground and sticking to the bottom of Captain Kuchiki’s sandals. Senbonzakura will peel him like fruit, dividing skin from the soft and warm flesh--)

Kensei draws his knife through the air, tracing patterns where ripples of powerful wind rips the grass out of the ground and tug on gravity. And, frustratingly, Byakuya’s fighting style keeps flashing across Renji’s mind.

Here is the breakdown from Renji’s humble perspective;

Fact 1: Muguruma’s ability to conjure wind is similar to Byakuya’s control of Senbonzakura’s blades. Both of them are powerful abilities that grant them immediate control of the battlefield.

Fact 2: Renji has never beaten Byakuya in a fight.

Hypothesis: Renji cannot beat Muguruma. 

Renji expects as much. But fighting pointless battles that he has no chance of winning is, to quote Ichigo, ‘his brand’. 

He pulls the segmented pieces of Zabimaru back together, the serrated blade making a reptilian clicking and hissing noise as it contracts. His ranged attacks are useless if Muguruma can just bat them away like a windsock. 

Okay, Abarai, let’s think here-- zoning abilities are effective, it means you can let your opponent waste their energy by flailing around uselessly, as evidenced by Renji just now. But there has to be some weakness, some chink in the armor for Renji to irritate. 

He sees Byakuya’s hands where Muguruma’s are, holding his combat knife the same way Byakuya wields the hilt of his sword. There’s a push of huge force, then the briefest pause, a moment where the currents of wind die down, before the next wall of attacks come forward. That’s Renji’s window right there. 

Renji abandons long-range. He gets close-- real close-- until the only distance between himself and the silver-haired captain is the length of his sword and swings down. In a match where two opponents are equal in strength, the one with the longer reach wins.

This erroneously assumes that Renji and Muguruma are equally matched in the first place. 

Muguruma blocks with his knife, which by all accounts should have gone flying out of his hand as soon as all of Zabimaru’s massive weight came down on it. But the iron grip on the hilt doesn’t falter for a second, holding Renji at bay like a matchstick holding up a mountain. 

“What happened t’ that bankai you were going on and on about?” Kensei drawls, his expression not budging from the flat, dry frown painted across that face. “The way you talked, I thought you’d take this a little more seriously.”

Renji backs off a little, giving himself some space. “I’m so sorry, am I  _ boring  _ you?”

“No, but you’re starting to get on my nerves. We both know that your shikai isn’t gonna do the damage you need to take me down. You’re gonna have you release your bankai if you don’t want to get hurt. Badly.”

He’s definitely right, but as soon as he says that Renji’s cortisol goes through the roof. And Renji is nothing if not willing to dig his teeth in for nothing but spite. 

“You first!”

Something shifts in Muguruma’s expression. Renji can’t tell it is right away, what flickers on that glare that doesn’t move, doesn’t give anything away. 

Then the ADHD part of Renji’s brain that is always off somewhere else when it’s supposed to be focusing comes up with an answer; Kensei has eyes like he does, dark and angry. Tight, like the eyes of a snarling dog defending its territory. Eyes that, despite Renji’s best attempts at smiling and looking normal, make him appear just a little bit unhinged.

Right now, Muguruma’s eyes are a bright, full moon yellow. 

“Your funeral, kid.”

Renji should be concerned that he’s in danger right now. Like, legitimate, life-threatening danger. But if he was afraid every time that were the case, he’d have very little time to experience any other emotion. It’s easy, in that way, to numb a crashing wave of panic into a low, constant but manageable hum of anxiety. Despite everything, Renji isn’t scared of hollows. 

Maybe that’s why Renji’s brain has time to absorb other things, the same way he noticed the yellow eyes. Things like the ribbons of silvery steel coiling around Muguruma’s massive arms, gripping every curve of his muscular biceps like a second skin. 

Or the way when Muguruma reels his metal-covered arm back, his entire body tenses with it. His stance is an unshakeable wall of confidence, the posture of someone who knows exactly how to throw a perfect punch. And there’s a sort of elegant gracefulness to the way that he throws his weight forward, muscles rippling with power. 

Renji has two very dumb thoughts right then and there; the first is to wonder if Muguruma specifically chose not to wear sleeves with his uniform because he knew his bankai would just shred them anyway. 

The second is ‘Wow Hot’. 

Then Renji blacks out, on account of the fist that collided with his face.

* * *

He doesn’t know how long he’d been unconscious, but at some point Renji wakes up to a sky that had gotten darker and Muguruma sitting on the grass nearby. 

The captain sighs and runs a hand through his gray hair when he notices that Renji is awake. “I thought I was gonna have to carry you to the Fourth.”

The coating of metal had disappeared from Muguruma’s arms, leaving only the long, black, tight fingerless clothes that cover his forearms, and Renji thinks being carried might not be so bad. 

Renji grapples for something to say other than ‘ow’, given the fact that his entire face feels like it’s been ripped off, slapped against a tree, and thrown back on upside down. He smells dried blood and tenderly prods at his nose to find a swollen, angry mass of flesh.

“You bwoke my fugging node.” 

It’s no wonder why Renji is in the Sixth Division. Just look at the way he carries himself with such boundless dignity. 

Muguruma averts his eyes and puts his fist over his chin, like that’s going to hide the smarmy smirk from observing Renji’s suffering. What an asshole.

“My bad. I’m sure Kotetsu’ll fix that up for you.” 

‘My bad’ indeed.

He’s right. This isn’t the first (or the last) time Renji’s gotten his nose busted. He tries to think of something else to say, and comes up empty. His brain helpfully notices that Kensei’s haori is missing, and seeing him in just the standard shihakusho makes him look younger somehow.

“Where’d yer haori?”

“Under your head.” 

Renji feels around under his skull and finds that, yes indeed, Muguruma had rolled up his captain’s haori and used it to pillow Renji’s head. Probably in the very likely event that Renji had a concussion. His ponytail is all smooshed against it, Muguruma’s gonna be finding long, red hairs on it for a few days. 

There’s something borderline sacrilegious about Muguruma using his symbol of authority to comfort Renji. If he were a less mature man, he would assume it was pity. But Muguruma didn’t have to be nice to him, he made that choice on his own. 

A beat of pause follows, Muguruma spins Tachikaze by the fingerguard on the hilt so it creates a flat circle of silver as it dances around his index finger. 

Abruptly, he says; “Lemme ask you something.”

“Go fer id.” 

“Why didn’t you just release your bankai? It’s no secret around here that you’re pretty tough, we might’ve been equally matched if you used it.”

Well, that’s very flattering. Renji holds his hand over his nose to stop any blood from dribbling out, and he wearily tries to think of how to answer. Plenty of people have asked Renji why does what he does, but it’s not with the intent of understanding. It’s because they think he’s stupid, and they have to gently guide him towards the correct answer. As if Renji isn’t already acutely aware of all his failings. 

But he doesn’t have a good answer, so instead he provides an honest one.

“Becaude you told me to.” 

Tachikaze continues to spin without Muguruma even looking at it. His stare continues to weigh on Renji. His dark, tight stare that is reading Renji as much as Renji is trying to read him. 

“Makes sense. Is that usually your reason for doing things?”

Renji blurts out his answer before he thinks about whether or not he should.

“Thad’s my reason f’r eberything.”

If Muguruma has a retort to that, he keeps it behind his teeth. He averts his eyes from Renji in a way that is very unsubtle, and perhaps edges on genuine pity. It’s not just in Renji’s imagination this time. 

Muguruma catches his knife mid-spin and holsters it in one fluid movement. He pulls his knees towards his chest, and begins the tedious process of standing up, moving jerkily and making those old-man grunts of someone with perpetually stiff back and knees. 

“You good to walk? We should get you back, have someone take care of that nose and make sure you don’t have a brain injury. Lift up your arms.”

Renji holds out his hands for Muguruma to grab and pull him up, and makes a grunt of surprise when the captain instead puts his hands under Renji’s armpits and lifts him up by the torso like he was a puppy. 

“Ookay,” Renji is set back on his feet, feeling a little indignant. “So, wha’dya think? Rematch?”

Muguruma scoffs, picking his haori off the ground and brushing dirt from the white grass-stained fabric. “Maybe after ya’ learn not to waste time ogling your opponent.”

* * *

Renji doesn’t often have a bug up his ass about rematching fights. He prefers to take every loss (and he has had many losses) as motivation to train harder, do better. He’s trying to be a little more efficient about how many brick walls he bashes his head against.

It isn’t fair for him to hold grudges against people for his own weaknesses, that’s all. So he takes that frustration, that spite and wrath, and redirects it towards himself, mulching those negative feelings up until they can be used as incentive. That’s how he improves, how he pushes himself. 

Is it a healthy coping mechanism? No. But is he getting better about it every day? Also no. But there are worse things he could do, and insisting on being mad at every person who has slighted him would make Renji much more annoying. He would not have many friends.

For some reason, Captain Muguruma Kensei is an exception to the rule. And it quickly becomes a common occurrence for Renji to show up around the Ninth Division, haranguing Shuuhei about his captain’s whereabouts so Renji can throw down the gauntlet. 

He isn’t sure if this new fixation is because Kensei managed to thrash him so thoroughly and in such a mortifying way, or because he was so infuriatingly considerate about it. But either way, it needs to be rectified. 

It seemed that Captain Muguruma had his fill, though. Each time Renji showed up again, he had a convenient excuse. 

Usually it’s something like either “I gotta go to a meeting” or “I’m making a quiche.”

Renji offers to come back later. Muguruma  orders tells him to take a seat, and fifteen minutes later is presented with a fresh plate of mushroom and sausage quiche with a side salad. It’s deliciously savory, but Renji’s inability to goad Muguruma into another fight is bittersweet.

Maybe it’s just because of that first impression, and the lack of answers it left him with. People are surprised that Renji is perceptive, that he can read people’s thoughts and intentions. As if Renji wasn’t weaned on danger, as if watching someone and predicting when and how they’ll make the first attack isn’t second nature to him. 

People are so obvious in that way, it’s almost repulsive how basic and simple they are. They don’t know that Renji knows what they’re thinking when they talk to him. When they hate him, when they’re disgusted by him, when they’re indifferent, and when they decide he is convenient. 

That’s 80% of Renji’s job, anyways. Figuring out how to be convenient.

Muguruma is more… difficult to understand. He doesn’t do small-talk. In fact he’s not much for conversation at all. He’s reserved, stand-offish, brusque to the point of rudeness, but always genuine. He is a man burdened with compulsive honesty, which is a quality he seems to share with his two lieutenants. 

“You can’t sit there. It’s  _ my _ chair.”

Renji looks up from the manga he was reading to find a pair of big, brown eyes glaring at him. Mashiro Kuna pouts from under a messy fringe of bright green hair, arms folded over her chest expectantly. 

He looks around, as if Kuna could be talking to anybody else. But no, she’s definitely referring to Renji, and the big green armchair he’s sitting in. He figured that this would probably be the case, since the stack of Kamen Rider books next to it wasn’t exactly Muguruma or Shuuhei’s style, but he got bored waiting for either of them to come out of their office and talk to him. 

“Sorry.” Renji shuts the book and stands. He’s barely off the cushion before Kuna worms her way into the vacated space, not caring as she bumps up against Renji’s back to do it and nearly pushing him over. God, Shuuhei wasn’t kidding when he said she was crazy strong for her size. 

Kuna spends a good few minutes arranging herself into the likeness of a pretzel. Her shoulders and neck nestle into the crease between armrest and back cushion, with one knee pressing against her chest. She sinks into the chair in a way that can’t be comfortable, looking every bit like the child she pretends to be. 

Renji grapples for something to say. He knows Kuna even less than the other visored. She doesn’t come to lieutenant meetings, all he knows is Shuuhei’s various complaints. 

“So… manga. That’s cool,” He says. Fucking batting 100% on the conversational skills here. “Did ya’ bring this stuff from the World of the Living?”

But Kuna isn’t interested in that thread of conversation that Renji is just barely holding onto. She loops her gloved hands around her knee and blinks at him with an expression so wide and naive that a spike of apprehension instantly plunges into Renji’s stomach. He knows-- he is  _ positive _ that there is something darker swimming under the surface. 

“You’re here a lot,” She says plainly. It isn’t up for debate. “You’re friends with Shuuhei, right?”

It’s a simple, straight-forward question, and yet also not. Renji is a grown man, he really hasn’t had to confirm whether or not he was friends with someone since he was in school. 

“Yeah.”

Kuna’s goggles slip a little down her forehead. She puts her gloved finger into her round cheek, and there’s a bit of a smirk playing on her lips.

“Are you friends with Kensei?” 

Renji can’t hold back the grimace on his face. He’s not friends with any captain, not even his own, by a long shot. No lieutenant is really ‘friends’ with a captain, because that would be inappropriate for the station. Even someone like Rangiku, who drinks and hangs out with Kyoraku like they’re old buddies, has to be constantly on guard and watch what she says around him.

(The only exception to the rule that Renji knows is Momo and Hitsugaya, but that’s an outlier. And whether they can still consider each other friends after one was impaled by the other is still up in the air.)

But he gives his imagination a work-out anyway. Tries to picture the usual things Renji does with his friends, except with Muguruma there. Stuff like going to izukayas for dinner in the evening, or having picnics after sparring sessions. And surprisingly Muguruma, always informal, unapologetically himself, fits right in.

No, that’s not entirely true. In the picture of Renji’s mind, there’s still a little awkwardness, but that doesn’t make it bad. Some quality bordering on scandalous, like they’re not supposed to be doing what they’re doing, though Renji can’t possibly imagine why that would be.

(Liar. He knows exactly what it means. But bottling that shit up is a trademark of the Abarai brand.) 

Not that he assumes that Muguruma  ~~ reciprocates ~~ likes Renji as a potential friend as much as he does. That’s kind of the whole problem, and making that assumption feels like Renji is just begging to embarrass himself.

What else is new?

Kuna is still waiting for an answer, fluttering her eyes at him, and Renji responds with a drawn out “Uuuuuuuuuuuuuh…” and prays for divine intervention to mercy-kill this interaction

The second-best thing to that happens when Shuuhei opens the door to his office. (Renji reminds himself to not be disappointed that Muguruma’s is still closed.) His hands are free of any documents or folders, which thankfully means he’s ready to clock out. 

“Kuna, stop bothering him.”

“You don’t even know what we were talking about!” 

“I know you were probably being a pain.” 

“Hey, it’s fine,” Renji raises hands in a pacifying gesture before this can devolve into sibling-esque argument. “You about ready to go?” 

Shuuhei says that he is, and Kuna watches them walk towards the door. “Where’re you going?”

“It’s none of your concern.” The co-lieutenant says sourly over his shoulder, and Renji doesn’t even try to hide his amusement. They might do very little other than yell and whine at each other, but having Mguruma and Kuna around have done wonders for breaking Shuuhei out of his shell and getting him to relax. 

Kuna mutters something that sounds like ‘Stupid Shuuhei!’ and Renji takes the unlikely role of mediator, tugging on Shuuhei’s arm. “Hisagi, c’mon!” 

They leave, but not before Shuuhei turns and tries to discreetly make a rude gesture at the green-haired visored. He’s not discreet enough, though, and looks appropriately sheepish when Renji laughs at him. 

* * *

They’re about halfway to their destination, and Renji notices Shuuhei get very stiff.

That’s the kind of thing he does when he’s nervous. Shuuhei doesn’t fidget and pace like Renji does, twitching and bouncing on his feet in an attempt to stamp down his anxiety. Instead, Shuuhei gets very, very still. His shoulders create a perfect straight line, his spine rigid and fists clenched into white-knuckled fists at his side. 

Renji stays quiet for a little, gives Shuuhei the courtesy of experiencing his own feelings at his own pace, before gently interrupting whatever spiral Shuuhei’s head is in.

“Shuuhei?”

His head snaps at the sound of his given name, gray eyes coming into focus on Renji. “Yeah?”

“You okay?” Renji starts, and then backtracks because it’s a stupid question. “It’s gonna be fine, man. It’s just our friends, it’ll be like an ordinary hang-out.” 

“It won’t. The context is different. Eventually, people are going to start talking.” Renji tries to argue, but Shuuhei stops him. “I’ve already accepted that. It certainly won’t be the worst piece of gossip that’s been spread about me.  _ Us _ , sorry. I’ve also accepted that it’s normal to be… uncomfortable, even though I know it’s not reasonable.” 

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” 

Shuuhei sighs, his entire chest seeming to collapse with it. “Can we just talk about something else? I don’t want to overthink about it right now.”

“Sure,” Renji rolls through his mental catalogue of topics to discuss. But it’s hard to get his mind off of the Muguruma train. “That hotpot your captain made was something, huh? You should learn how to make it for Hinamori’s next potluck!”

That seems to work, a smile cracking Shuuhei’s grim expression. “You liked that, huh? I couldn’t tell from the way you took three whole extra servings of it.”

What is this? Urahara’s Shoten? Stop judging Renji for eating!

Renji stands is ground “Jealous that you didn’t ask for seconds first, aren’t you?” 

“Yeah, maybe.” Shuuhei rolls his eyes, seeming much happier already. “I was surprised. You usually hate spicy stuff, don’t you? I thought you were gonna take one bite and then chug a bottle of antacids.” 

“Well,” Renji shrugs. “It’s different when Captain Muguruma makes it.” 

“You’re also so fussy about eating other people’s cooking.”

“It’s different when Captain Muguruma makes it.”

Shuuhei makes a thoughtful noise like “Hmm.” and gets quiet, and Renji worries he might have shown too much of his hand. He can think of very little situations more awkward than getting a crush on his friend’s boss. Aside from of course, getting a crush on that friend, on his school roommate, his 11th division mentor, and his own boss who is also his best friend’s brother. 

Renji is not romantic. At all. His idea of a perfect date is going for an early morning run, window-shopping and then picking up take-away to eat at home. He’s been to one wedding in his life, and spent the entirety of it trying to recover from the bachelor party of the previous night. 

He is a stranger to romance, but that doesn’t stop Renji from falling a little bit in love with every person who has ever been nice to him. And, troublingly, people who have been mean to him. 

He emerges from the depth of his own self-psychoanalysis when they reach the Tenth Division. Rangiku had reserved a conference room for them to use, but only for half an hour. Shuuhei is still dragging his feet when they enter, like his body and his brain are fighting for control.

The room is larger than it needs to be, made bigger and emptier by the fact that the long tables that usually preside in the middle of the room have been pushed against the wall. 

Several chairs had been arranged in a circle, the middle one occupied by Kotetsu, who tries to smile shyly even as she fidgets and squirms uncomfortably in her captain’s haori. Rangiku sits on her left side, sipping on a juice box. Her smile looks tired, shadows sitting under her eyes and golden blond hair loose and unstyled. 

That’s nothing compared to Izuru, seated on her left, who looks like the risen dead. He slouches in his chair, one arm angled on the back of his chair, hand holding up his cheek. He looks as if he might fall over asleep, eyelids drooping heavily. His skin is so sickly pale, it nearly appears to be glowing. He holds his juice box in his thin, bony hands, but doesn’t lift it to his lips.

“Hey, Kira.” 

Izuru’s eyes flicker up to Renji, and a spear of guilt passes through him. The blond looks miles better than he did the previous months, countless days of treatments and physical therapy passing by in a blur. 

He’s going to continue getting better. After all, he has Rangiku and Shuuhei taking care of him. Every day, Izuru will get a little bit stronger, a little bit healthier. But until then, Renji will deal with all the time that he himself wasn’t there when he should have been. More fuel for the mulch pile.

“Hi,” He waves one black-gloved hand, still looking a little like it’s taking all his effort just to remain upright. “Hinamori saved you guys some seats.” 

They both take the chairs next to Momo, who looks relieved that they’ve arrived. “Welcome. I’m glad you guys could make it.” 

She says it to both of them. Although Renji is still not positive if he is here as a member, or just support. Probably something in between. He’s here because he has to be, and because he wants to. 

“Well, uh, if we’re all r-ready to get started.” Kotetsu claps her hands, then flinches as if scared by the noise. She’s always been so shy, Renji worries about her as the new Fourth Division captain. “Let’s begin the first official Shinigami Addiction Support Group!” 

It’s an ambitious idea, having any sort of support group in the Seireitei. The Gotei’s preference is to cover up all flaws and weaknesses, so Kotetsu only got a little funding from Kyoraku for snacks and juice. 

It also meant, for the members, risking public humiliation. Shuuhei wasn’t wrong when he said people would talk. For shinigami, admitting you were an alcoholic was par for the course. But trying to get better, now  _ that _ could make you a social pariah. 

Kotetsu’s schedule for their first SASG is for all of them to go around and share when they first started substance abuse. Which was difficult, because three out of the five people present didn’t remember when that was. 

No one wanted to start, so Renji gave in and pitched things off with the fact that as a little kid he would crawl through windows and steal shochu bottles. Momo admitted that she started taking pills after Aizen’s defection. Shuuhei had older brothers, and had been drinking with them in his family’s barn as far back as he could remember. Rangiku drank to make people think she was older, since the only thing in the Rukongai worse than being a woman was being a little girl. And Izuru had started drinking in the Academy, but only started binging after he transferred to the Third. (Surprise fuckin’ surprise.) 

Renji isn’t shocked by any of this, he knew these people well and could have guessed at the size and the shape of the monsters that haunted them. But there was something deeply, unsettlingly intimate about this, about sitting in a circle and describing, with their own words, the size and the shape of their monsters. 

It wasn’t bad. It just felt weird, which is how every experience feels the first time. Kotetsu seems pleased with their head start, maybe even impressed by it. She wanted everyone to come back next week, which they all tentatively agreed to. Renji was glad, because he was looking forward to his friends not being so drunk and sad all the time. 

Once the meeting officially concluded, Momo suggested they celebrate the birth of the SASG with some tea. And on the way, Renji saw a taiyaki stand so of course they needed to hit that up as well. It was warm and nice and beautiful, the intense weight from sharing with each other earlier left them all tender and soft. 

Even Kotetsu seemed more relaxed. She never seemed to like Renji much when they were both vice-captains, but after he went out of his way to grease the wheels of conversation in the meeting it looked like she was warming up to him. Steam rose from her tea cup, bringing pink to her long face while she laughed along with everyone else.

And Renji, that ADHD piece of him circling back like a shark, wondered if this was evidence that lieutenants and captains could be friends. 

* * *

As soon as Renji gets bored with pretending he’s not attracted to him, he decides he’s going to sleep with Kensei. Probably as a one-night stand, but possibly a fling if he’s a very good boy.

He made a valiant effort out of respect for Shuuhei, and the general likelihood that Renji will embarrass himself. But it’s been a long time since Renji has humiliated himself, and there’s a good chance that if it doesn’t happen at least once a week the universe might implode. 

Renji comes up with a few good justifications for this:

  1. Kensei is nice. Genuinely nice. But not, like, _too_ nice, you know? Not so overly nice in that way that gets Renji’s hackles up. But he’s also reserved and stand-offish enough that it makes Renji feel kind of special whenever Kensei offers him an open door and a hot plate of food. 



  1. He’s handsome, too. Very easy on the eyes. He’s made of hard lines and broad valleys. He has a full, square jaw and a flat, cute nose. His gray hair looks fluffy and soft, and he wears that ridiculous, huge belt. And god, those _arms arms arms_ ** _ARMS_**. Wide shoulders that Renji could just sink his nails into--



It’s surprising, because Renji is supposed to be the one with the hard lines and the jaw and the arms and shit. Renji is supposed to like short, slender, bookish guys with narcissistic tendencies. This is definitely ordering off of his usual menu, but Kensei’s particular genre of masculine appeal must be universal. 

  1. It’s been, admittedly, a long fucking time since Renji was in any sort of relationship, physical or otherwise. A long time since he’s had sex. A long time since he’d been kissed. And it would be just nice to have some touch. 



A history of Renji’s previous trysts would be short and boring. Casual hook-ups and sputtered-out crushes. Renji didn’t have time for love, because he always put his career first. His career goals are what matter the most, following his ambition to get stronger and earn everyone’s respect. And he would never, ever, even when Renji is alone and subjected to his own thoughts, reflect on those years of hard work that lead to where he is now and wonder if they were really worth it. 

He would not lie awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, and feel every decision he’s ever made crushing him at once. He would never sit, paralyzed by fear and hopelessness, and think that he will probably die young. He doesn’t feel so lost and lonely in this illusion of a tough, powerful warrior that he’s built around himself, longing for a little bit of tenderness. To feel something, to reach through those layers of bullshit that Renji coats himself with like armor. 

So here he is now. Planning on how to seduce his friend’s boss. And Mugumura already knows that Renji is attracted to him. It should be easy, right? All Renji has to do is not be socially inadequate for five minutes to ask him out. Great. Great. Great.

* * *

What a time for Renji to spontaneously forget how he’s ever asked any person out ever in his life. 

He could go for the stupidly simple approach-- break into Muguruma’s office and pose on top of his desk so when Muguruma comes in Renji is lounging like Cleopatra on her chaise, hair all loose and sexy and shihakusho sliding rakishly down his shoulders. Perfect. Couldn’t possibly get spanked with a sexual harassment suit for that. 

Yeah, Renji doesn’t want to come off as desperate, despite everything about himself that indicates the contrary. And it’s dumb to be nervous about coming to Muguruma’s office again and loitering around, but. You know. 

“Do you see a sign that says ‘park your ass here’ on my desk?” Muguruma says when he sees Renji sitting on the edge of the aforementioned desk. 

Renji looks up and blinks, face as innocent and vacant as he can manage. “I can’t read.” 

Muguruma slaps Renji’s thigh with the stack of papers in his hand. “Up.” 

He sighs begrudgingly and slides onto his feet, stretching his arms out over his head. He thinks that just maybe he caught a glance of Muguruma looking down the deep V opening of Renji’s robe as he did so, but it could have been wishful thinking. 

Muguruma coughs quietly, and tosses the stack of papers onto his desk so they slide messily over the smooth surface before dropping into his chair. The organizational merits of this office are known only by its owner, and are absolutely baffling to everyone else. 

“You better not be hiding in here from your captain again. The last thing I need you dragging Kuchikis in here, since they seem to follow you around like ducklings.” 

Renji tries and fails to repress a snort. He feels bad teasing Rukia when she’s not here to defend herself, but Byakuya is free game. “Just swinging by to see if today is the day you finally get off your ass and fight me again.”

“No.”

“Why not?” 

“Because my feet hurt.” Muguruma says impassively, like this is a perfectly reasonable explanation. 

Renji tamps down on the urge to make a comment about free massages. “Don’t quit your day-job, Captain Muguruma. ‘Cuz you’re never gonna make it in politics if you lie like that.”

Muguruma looks at him, brows furrowed. Renji’s gut tells him to back-pedal, wondering if he’s maybe crossed some invisible boundary. If he’s not really Muguruma’s friend at all and has grossly misread simple tolerance as fondness. 

Then the captain clicks his tongue scornfully. “You know my given name, don’t you?”

Renji is still primed to escape, utterly caught off-guard by this question. “Yeah?”

“Then use it, and save yourself a few extra syllables.” Mugu--  _ Kensei _ scowls at one of the documents on his desk, then picks up a pen and circles a few words in red. Renji risks peeking over to see that it’s a memo from the office of Captain Soi Fon, and it looks like he’s corrected some grammar errors she’s made. 

Renji cannot even begin to imagine the political fallout that will result from this action. 

“Er-- yeah, alright.”

Kensei sighs, but it’s from exasperation. “I swear, all of ya’ are so fancy and formal. Even the brats like you.” 

Renji is not sure what he takes more offense to; being called a ‘brat’, or the implication that he is in any way fancy. He sort of gapes in indignity at the remark, the way a high-class lady would gape while clutching her pearls. 

Underneath that, though, lies something else. The way Kensei says ‘all of you’ meaning Renji and the rest of the Gotei. The majority Them to the visoreds’ small, separate Us. 

He’s never thought about it before, but Soul Society must seem very archaic to the visored now. They have had one hundred years to live among humanity, watching the world evolve at the speed that mortals do. But Soul Society is like an eternal play. The script never changes, just the actors.

“It’s not bein’ ‘fancy’, it’s just how you’re supposed to do things.” Renji argues, raising an inked eyebrow. “Don’t you remember being a lieutenant and having a bunch of captains breathing down your neck?”

Kensei squints and writes something in the margins that will probably earn him at least one assassination attempt. “I wasn’t.” 

Renji waits for Kensei to elaborate, and a minute and a half passes before he realizes that Kensei has failed to do so. So he has to prompt, “Wasn’t what?”

“A lieutenant. They bumped me up from fifth seat.” 

That stops Renji’s train of thoughts right in its tracks. Rather, it rips the tracks out of the ground, causing the train to spiral off of the track and collapse into a flaming heap on the side of the road. It’s a huge tragedy. Hundreds have died. 

He looks down at the floor, then up at the ceiling, as if expecting a sign saying ‘Gullible’ taped somewhere just out of his periphery. Renji then looks back at Kensei and all thoughts of conquests, sexual or otherwise, temporarily halted. 

“That can’t possibly be true.” 

Kensei taps his pen against the desk. “Yeah, you got me, Abarai,” (How come Kensei still gets to use his formal name? Is that a double-standard? Hello?) “That’s just the kind of thing I’d lie to you about for no reason. I’m an incorrigible prankster like that.” 

“Yeah, okay-- but.” Renji crosses one arm over his chest and uses his free hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. 

He had thought that bouncing from sixth seat to lieutenant like he had done was a pretty rare spectacle. But the gulf between lieutenant-class and captain-class is so vast, it was a wide chasm full of murky waters and indecisive depths. 

Still, it wasn’t unheard of. Maybe Renji’s mental block is just from trying to imagine a younger Kensei, still shouty and cranky, but more rough around the edges. Eager to prove himself. Slightly slimmer than he is now, with a smooth face, gold piercings flashing on his ears and brow, eyes on fire with willful stubbornness-- 

Oof. Renji is getting ahead of himself. He wondered if there were any pictures. 

A huge shrug rolls off of Kensei’s shoulders. “Well, that’s just how it goes. One day I’m minding my own business in the Eleventh, the next I get a damn haori thrown at me an’ I’m dragged out for the stupid captain initiation ceremony.”

“ _ And _ you used to be in the Eleventh?!” Renji’s eyes are stinging from unpeeling the many layers of this onion.

“You know, your shock and surprise is really flattering.”

“I’m just trying to wrap my head around it. You must’ve been a real piece of work, it’s not like a promotion like that just happens to every schmuck who becomes captain.” Renji says, fighting the urge to not be a huge suck-up. “It’s impressive.”

Kensei’s frown twists, his brows furrowing even deeper than Renji thought was possible. “Yeah, maybe.” 

“Maybe?” Renji parrots back. He takes the moment of distraction to sit back on Kensei’s desk and see if he notices. 

He doesn’t. Instead, Kensei laces his rather large fingers together and takes a moment to collect his thoughts. Since it’s rare for Kensei to not just blurt out the first thought that crosses his mind, Renji stays quiet and pays attention.

“Ya’ ever think that the timing for when they pick new captains is, like… really convenient?” He says, “When a lieutenant drops, that spot usually gets filled right away. But captain vacancies stay open for years sometimes.” 

Renji hasn’t had this thought. But Kensei’s been in this game way longer than he has, he’s seen more captains come and go than Renji’s scant almost 40 years of being a shinigami. 

“I just figured they were bein’ careful about vetting their candidates. Like, you’d hope if they were picking someone to be one of the thirteen most powerful people in Soul Society, some thought would go into the process.” 

“Sure, you’d hope. But it always feels like if a new captain pops up, it’s right when the Gotei needs a distraction. Something flashy and important to draw the eyes away from a political scandal, unpopular legislation, budget cuts,” Kensei’s eyes look far away, vaguely staring at the wall. “A traumatic war that just ended.” 

If he were normal, an uneasy feeling would curl in Renji’s gut. He’d feel nervous, paranoid. Afraid of his superiors lying to him. But Renji already knows that’s true anyway, he has never been under the illusion that people like Kyoraku (or the former Captain-commander, certainly) cared about his well-being. 

He’ll never understand people who come into the Gotei with any illusions of honor or trust. For Renji, it was initially just about a roof over his head and three meals a day. Then it was about power, that most intoxicating, addicting sensation of feeling superior to other people. 

The obligation came after that. All of Renji’s friends were here, after all, so what kind of asshole would Renji be  _ not _ to stand by them? Soon he wasn’t really sure if he was in control of where he went or who he fought for anymore, he was just picking random directions to sprint towards and hoping he had guessed right. The stakes were too high not to. 

“I didn’t take you for a conspiracy nut like Hisagi.” Renji says. 

“It’s all conspiracy until ya’ get subjected to illegal experimentation and then exiled for one hundred years.” Kensei counters.

“Well-- yeah. Fuck. When you put it like that.” 

Renji takes a moment to remember what the hell he was doing here in the first place, and mourns the degree to which he’s lost control of the conversation. It’s going to be a hard dismount from ‘man, it’s crazy that we live in a military dystopia that controls every facet of our lives’ to ‘hey, what are you doing friday night’.

His legs are too long to swing from Kensei’s desk. He feels selfish and bad now for even coming here when Kensei clearly has more stuff on his plate, Renji forcing his attention on the older man because he can’t leave well enough alone. He’s so stupid and desperate, clinging to anyone who shows him a scrap of acknowledgement. 

Hiding the self-doubt that is now delightfully running laps around Renji’s head, he pushes himself off of the desk and makes a big show of being casual. “I shouldn’t be sittin’ here and distracting you from important stuff. I’ll pop by later and bother you when you’re free.” 

Kensei’s voice isn’t quiet, but it doesn’t have the usual force behind it either. “You’re not a bother.”

If Renji weren’t so pitiful, hearing that wouldn’t make him light up inside. Just like that, his melancholy is forgotten and hope threatens to spark. He’s like a dumb little puppy, distracted by a treat. 

“You don’t have to leave, either.” Kensei adds, and levels his gaze at Renji’s. He’s got no business looking that intense in this situation. “I’m making lunch after I’m done with this bullshit. You could stay.” 

Renji tries not to get ahead of himself, a task he’s failed at spectacularly every time it’s been attempted. 

“I’m actually having lunch with Rukia in a bit.” 

“Dinner, then. You like yakitori, right? I know a place, it’s pretty good.” 

Renji has to avert his face so Kensei doesn’t see him blushing pink like a little bitch. He wants to grab himself and scream  _ you’re a grown man! You can be cool about getting asked out on a date!  _

“Yeah, sounds great!” 

* * *

The teahouse that Kensei selected is small, out of the way, and saturated in local flavor. It smells kind of smokey, and the light filtering out of the windows is an oily shade of yellow. It’s exactly the place Renji can imagine Kensei coming, probably with Hirako, Otoribashi and Yadomaru. A quiet place where everyone minds their own business, and where they wouldn’t immediately be recognized. 

It’s good. All of the places that Renji likes are too loud and public. And with the restaurant split into private rooms, it won’t matter that he’s still wearing his work clothes. 

Yeah, it’s Renji’s big date and he can’t be bothered to wear something nice. Kensei is a lucky man. The fact is that his closet is mostly uniforms, and the yukatas that Renji has for the unlikely occasion that he needs to make a formal appearance seem… inappropriate. Like if he wears something different, he’s sending the message that tonight  _ means _ something. Which it doesn’t. It’s just a date. Maybe it’s not even a date. Just dinner between two workplace associates. God. Fuck. 

He even debates on if he should change his hair. Renji normally wears his hair back because it brings out the definition of his jaw, and because it’s flashy and Renji is nothing if not a slut for attention. But maybe for a romantic outing he should do  _ something  _ different. 

Before leaving his quarters, Renji analyzes himself in the bathroom mirror. Yep, that’s him alright. Hello, idiot. 

He takes his hair out of his ponytail and smooths it down with his fingers. People always say his hair is one of his most striking features, maybe he should wear it down tonight. 

He does have very nice hair. Always been proud of the bold, unique color. And having ithanging around his face and shoulders softens some of those harsh angles making up the frame of Renji’s face, throwing shadows over his jaw that rounds it out a little bit. It didn’t do anything for his long, sharp nose, or his thin lips stretched over long teeth. The front part of his hair threatens to fall into his face, shading his dark, beady eyes, making him look more like a shaggy, feral animal. 

Renji knows he is not, as the kids say, ‘conventionally attractive’. Which wouldn’t have been so bad if he stopped falling for people who were fucking gorgeous, and made him look like an escaped orangutan in comparison. But if Renji can’t be good-looking, he can at least be striking. His tattoos and long hair made sure of that, demanding all eyes on him wherever he went. 

He put his hair back up into its ponytail. Then back down again. Up, then down. Up. Down. Once to the side in a braid-thing. Down. 

Fine, down. If it seems like Kensei thinks it’s weird, Renji could lie and say he lost his hairpin. This is so stupid. 

  
  


“You’re late.”

“I’m not late, it’s only…” The screen of Renji’s soul communicator lights up, digital clock flashing. “Oh. Shit.”

A snort escapes Kensei’s nose. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s go see if they gave away our room.” 

To Renji’s infinite relief and anxiety, Kensei doesn’t look different from normal. He left his haori behind, perhaps to not draw as much attention to himself with a big Ninth Division logo painted on his back. But his shihakusho, his gloves, even the style of his hair looks just the same as if he was going into work. Renji becomes suddenly, intensely aware of how many times he has to tuck his loose hair behind his ears. 

Wait. Hold up, is that cologne? There’s a smell tickling Renji’s nose, masculine notes of cedar and seaweed. Did Kensei dab some cologne on for their date? That was sweet. Unless it wasn’t cologne and it was aftershave. Or fancy soap. Or he wasn’t wearing anything, and he just naturally smelled like a romantic lumberjack on the beach.

Once they were settled at their table in their private room, the hostess hovered in the sliding doorway. 

“Can I start you gentlemen with something to drink? The house would recommend our hot plum sake.” 

That sounds very, very good. And sharing a bottle of sake with Kensei would be a very easy, convenient way to get this date pleasantly humming along. What a time for Renji to remember he’s straight-edge now. Good gods,  _ why _ did he promise to be sober?

Renji pushes his hair out of his eyes for what feels like the millionth time in the last eight minutes. “Can I just get a black tea?” 

“Two of them, please.” Kensei adds the door sliding shut and leaving them both alone in blissful privacy. 

Renji leans back on his hands, his knee pressing against the bottom of the table and licking the inside of his teeth. He’s already done the hard part by asking Kensei out (getting asked out by Kensei, same difference) so now this should be easy street.

Of course, Kensei isn’t the best conversationalist, so Renji would be carrying this date. That’s fine, it just gives Renji more opportunities to make himself look confident and suave and whatever. 

“I--”

“You look nice.” Kensei pulverizes the half thought-out sentence still percolating in Renji’s brain. “I’ve never seen you wear your hair down like that before. It looks good.”

“Oh!” Kensei - 2, Renji - 0. Renji fights to keep the smile on his face from turning into a big, stupid grin. He loses immediately. “Thanks.”

  
  


“This is a nice place. Cozy atmosphere. You come here a lot since you’ve been back in Soul Society?” 

“Since before I’ve been back.” Kensei gulps noisily from his clay-painted cup of steaming tea. He hasn’t said anything about the lack of alcohol, though Renji is really wishing he had some social lubricant to ease his own tension. “This place has been hanging around for centuries. Rose an’ I came here before our impromptu early retirement.” 

“No kidding?” Renji’s inked eyebrows lifts. “Was it way different back then?”

Kensei casts a brief glance around the warm, earthy green and brown colors scheme, the traditional, low-set table and cushions they were seated on. “No, actually. It’s exactly the same as I remember.”

“Figures. Lucky me that you remembered the yakitori’s good.” Renji grins before depositing another cleaned skewer onto his plate and discreetly wiping a bit of sauce off on his hakama. 

“Guess it is.” Kensei uses the end of his skewer as a very long toothpick. It looks very unsafe. “So. You finally gonna tell me your deal is or what?”

The smile drops off Renji’s lips, brows knitting together. Had he done something wrong? Kensei didn’t say it in an accusing way, more of the usual casual interest he shows in anything that isn’t immediately irritating to him. Still, it’s hard for Renji to find an arrangement of those words that doesn’t make him think he had failed some kind of test.

“My deal?” 

“‘M not stupid. Once we came back to the Gotei, I started trying to piece together what we’d missed with Aizen and his ratpack. It wasn’t easy, everyone had their own versions of what happened. But the fact that I ran the division in charge of the newspaper helped.” 

His hand absently tap the end of his wooden skewer against the edge of his plate, drumming out a tune that was annoyingly devoid of rhythm and made it a little hard for Renji to really focus in on the conversation. Kensei’s hands are huge, rough on the inside with callouses lining the soft valleys of his hands. At least two of his knuckles are misaligned, the protrusion of bone slouching down like the skin doesn’t fit right. Renji has seen that kind of fracture a lot in the Eleventh, the kind that came from throwing hard punches. A boxer’s fracture, his brain supplies. 

Kensei’s voice drags Renji away from his gay thoughts. “Kuchiki’s near-execution, Ichigo wreaking havoc through Soul Society, those kids tearing across Los Noches. Anywhere there’s chaos, you seem to be tangled in the mix.” 

This line of conversation is vexing. Renji is very bad at explaining himself, and on self-reflection. Looking at the past is like staring down the barrel of every mistake Renji has ever made, every guilt-ridden, selfish decision or humiliating defeat. 

The way Kensei says it sounds like a cross between an interrogation and a compliment, and Renji doesn’t know whether to act humble or make excuses. But he’s sure that Kensei wouldn’t be nearly so interested in Renji’s very bizarre career history if he knew just how many of those events involved him getting tossed around like a ragdoll in a tornado. 

“What about it?” Renji says, and fails to sound entirely non-hostile. 

If Kensei notices Renji’s tone, he can feign innocence like a champion. Renji has scared a lot of people before, so much so that he has to make a huge effort to make himself soft and unthreatening for the people in his life that he doesn’t want to hurt. But he doesn’t scare Kensei. 

“I’m just wondering what makes you so special.”

And just like that, the blinding-white coil of rage winds its way around Renji’s stomach. It slithers up his throat and tightens its vice grip, sharp scales grinding and cutting into his skin. 

Once again, as he always seems to end up doing, Renji pushes down on that feeling. Flattening his hackles, Renji makes his hand pick up his teacup and lift it to his mouth without shaking. God, he wants alcohol so badly right now, an anesthetic to numb his brain and all the jagged little thoughts in it. Renji’s voice mumbles around the lip of the cup. “Whatever.”

Kensei’s brow lifts. Is he enjoying Renji’s discomfort, or just being his usual, oblivious self. He is as indecipherable to Renji as he ever was, no cracks in his armor. “Didn’t mean to touch a nerve. I just figure there’s more to you than everyone thinks.” 

“There’s no nerve. And there isn’t. More to me, I mean.” Renji’s scowling now. He can’t stop himself, the instinct to bare his teeth overpowers the will to make himself unobtrusive. “I’m just me.”

He knows what everybody thinks about him, both the good and the bad. Renji’s heard it all, that he’s loud, uncultured, that he needs someone to keep that leash around his neck and keep him under control. None of that surprises him. 

No, what gets under his skin almost as much is the ‘nice’ things people say to him, right to his face like he should be appreciative. How much they admire his undying loyalty to a cause that can’t possibly pay him back for everything he’s given. How hard he works, having to put in twice as much effort just to match someone else’s bare minimum. 

“I’m a workhorse, that’s all. Everybody knows that if you need someone to give 150%, I’m your guy.” Renji says, bitterness thick on his tongue. “Isn’t that inspiring? Even if you have nothing, come from nothing,  _ are _ nothing, you can still reach the enviable position of subordinate to a man born rich and talented. What a dream, huh?”

Renji places the cup down, and before he knows it he’s ended up sitting up on his knees. One palm is splayed on the surface of the table, leaning in towards Kensei like a crouched animal. Not that it had any effect on the captain, if Renji was paying close attention he might have noticed a slight quirk of Kensei’s lips. 

“I’m sure people love that. Thinking that if I can make it through sheer stubbornness, anybody can. Imagine what somebody with  _ actual _ talent can do!” He keeps barreling on. “It can’t possibly be that I made it this far because I’m smart, or capable, or that I’m just  _ special _ .”

And just like that, Renji doesn’t know how he got so close to Kensei. Close enough to reach out and put his hand on Kensei’s chest. To breath in the maybe-cologne-maybe-aftershave-maybe-soap-maybe-nothing that Renji can smell wafting off of his neck like a target on his throat. To want to put a ridiculously, terrifyingly powerful man underneath him and drink all of the strength right out of him. 

“But I  _ am _ . I’m fucking special.” Renji hisses, his breath skating through the loose curtains of red hair that have fallen into his face. His hands find the solid shape of Kensei’s shoulders, nearly dragging him in for a half-embrace. “Is that okay? Got any more interview questions for me to field?”

There’s a split second where Kensei looks more genuinely happy than Renji has ever seen him before, all teeth and fire in his eyes. Like he’s cracked open Renji’s shell and found something hot and sweet inside to eat. 

“No, I’m good.” Those big, callous-lined fingers tuck Renji’s hair behind his ears, not at all worried about being bitten. “So then, Mr. Special, if you don’t need anyone else, what do you want with  _ me _ ?”

It feels like Renji’s hands are burning where they touch him. Renji should not talk to a captain this way, touch a captain this way. He should grovel like he’s always supposed to, looking up at the real heroes from his god-given position in the dirt. 

But he knows that Kensei will not push him away. Won’t recoil from his rage, won’t beat him like a bad dog for showing some spine and some teeth. He’s not afraid of Renji making him feel weak. 

“It’s gettin’ late.” Renji says, though it really isn’t and they’re both stone-cold sober anyways. “We oughta split the check.”

* * *

“I think there’s a hotel around here.” 

“I don’t wanna spend the night in some no-tell motel.” Kensei steps off the porch of the restaurant, the chill turning his breath into gray steam on the evening shadows. “I’ll take you home.” 

Renji rubs his hands together, generating heat between his palms, and wonders if he should remind Kensei that this may not be the best idea. If someone in the Sixth sees him taking the captain of the Ninth into his quarters, it could lead to some awkward questions later. Kensei might be testing him, or just not care about the risks to his reputation and assume that Renji is similarly unaffected. 

“Such a gentleman.”

The wind buffets Kensei’s hair, threatening to disrupt the faux hawk style it’s combed up in. Just enough to tease Renji with the idea of what it might look like if it were Renji’s fingers sliding through that hair instead of the breeze. Or, preferably, what it would look like flattened down from Renji’s pillow. 

Kensei’s eyes look ahead at nothing, dark and narrowed under furrowed brows. It looks like he’s scowling, though he often just looks like that. And it’s about after the third time Renji has to indicate to Kensei where their turn is that he has an epiphany. Kensei isn’t actually glaring all the time, he just has shit eyesight. 

Renji’s never seen him wear glasses. He probably refuses to wear them out of pride, or spite. 

“You’re upset.” Kensei says suddenly, halfway between a question and a statement. Misinterpreting a rare moment of silence from Renji of all people. 

For a hot minute, Renji can’t imagine why he’d say that. Like Renji’s feelings are hurt or whatever. It’s not like he’s fragile, although yes maybe he is a little more fragile than he’d like. Then the last hour catches up to him. 

“Oh! No-- shit, no.” He shakes his head, “I didn’t mean to, like, go off on you like that. I was just talking some shit, forget about it--”

“Shut up, I’m not mad or anything.” Kensei interrupts. “The way you were talking back there, it felt real-- ah, nostalgic, I guess. Something about how you sounded, it just reminded me of Hiyori.”

“Who?”

“One of the visored. She stayed back in the World of the Living, so I guess you wouldn’t ‘ve run into her.” 

Kensei is close enough that their arms brush against each other. Renji could feel the heat roll off of Kensei’s body, if there was any heat to feel. But in those tiny moments of brief contact, there’s no warmth to sieve off of Kensei’s skin, he absorbs the cold around him like pure metal. 

Renji keeps himself from staring, though Kensei probably wouldn’t have been able to see if he was. “Kyoraku didn’t offer to let her come back? That’s rough.”

“No, he did. She turned him down.” 

Renji tries to wrap his head around that. All of the visored had been former shinigami-- not just any shinigami, but captains and lieutenants. High-ranking, important, powerful people. And they’d just been dumped on the street like nothing. 

How do you move on from that, from losing everything you are and everything you know? How do you not come back, chewing on all that pain and agony for one hundred years, just seething with desire to spit it back and prove how wrong they were?

The pauses where Renji doesn’t talk seems to make Kensei antsy. He waits for the lieutenant to add something before filling in the empty space himself.

“I don’t think Hiyori would’ve been happy back here anyway. She always had a problem with running her damn mouth, but I can’t imagine her now doing the same old lieutenant shit she used to. Taking orders, having to listen to windbags like Kuchiki and Soi Fon.” 

He supposes that he can understand that. Renji’s never thought about what he would do if it had been him who was exiled, if Aizen had done some sinister dumbfuckery that got him kicked out. 

Knowing his luck, Renji would end up in Urahara’s Shoten. Move into the guest room, clean up around the shop, get bossed around by Urahara, Tessai and the kids. Live out the rest of his unbearably, supernaturally long life as a salesboy like some minimum wage purgatory. 

Yikes.

From that angle, things are looking pretty good for ol’ Renji now. Still got his job, with all the ups and downs that come with it. An evening to himself with a beautiful, weird man. It’s not bad. Not bad at all. 

“Hey,” He starts, feeling a spark of that dangerous confidence start back up again. “I forgot to say earlier, but thanks for taking me out.” 

Riding that rare tide of perilous willfulness before it can slip between his fingers and leave him with the same sour, self-deprecating doubt he’s used to, Renji snakes his arm around Kensei’s bicep, catching the other man in the crook of his elbow. Close enough to feel personal, not too close to be romantic. 

Kensei seems a little surprised, but not affronted. He leans into the touch, confirming what Renji suspected earlier when Kensei started with the poking and prodding questions; Kensei isn’t withholding anything. He’s not going to keep Renji on the hook or lead him on. But if Renji wants something, he has to ask for it directly, show some initiative. He can work with that.

“Don’t mention it.”

“Sorry I made it weird.”

“You didn’t make it weird.” Kensei says, and means it.

The door to Renji’s lieutenant's quarters slid open, the only movement in the otherwise silent and still hall of the Sixth Division barracks. The hallway is clean and quiet to the point of being unnerving, like the building could be almost abandoned if Renji didn’t know the several hundred shinigami who lived right next door to him. 

Some of them look up to him so much, crushing him with their admiration. And others just watch, holding their tongues, ready for Renji to fly too close to the sun and come crashing back down to earth.

Understandably, it’s hard for Renji to bring dates here.

“This is me.” Renji announces unnecessarily into the open door. He goes straight to the lantern on the low table in the middle of the room, lighting it up and filling the dark space with a low, ivory glow.

Kensei remains on the other side of the threshold, watching Renji. He’s so fucking broad, his shoulders seem to take up the whole, pitch-black doorway. Spooky looking motherfucker. 

“You gonna invite me in for coffee or what?”

“Don’t have coffee.”

“More tea, then.”

“Why must we play these games, Muguruma?”

“‘Cuz I’m your guest.” Kensei grouses. “So show me a little hospitality.”

Renji makes a great show of sighing and shuffling back to the doorway, holding it wide open. He waves with a great flourish of his arm. “Won’t you please come in, Captain?” 

The old floorboards creak under Kensei’s weight as he enters, probably not feeling too out of place in Renji’s rather barren living space.

A spartan living area, holding the overflow of books that Renji never finished reading and sports equipment he never has time to use. A tiny, mostly unused kitchenette. A closet-sized bedroom with a saggy futon. 

Renji closes the door behind him and locks it. He has the beginning of a question on his lips, asking if Kensei wants to take a seat on the couch or something while Renji boils a pot of water, but he never gets the chance to be a good host. The moment he turns around, Kensei is standing so close to him, close enough to breath in that scent, close enough to see that faint light blotted out by his head and shoulders like the moon over a solar eclipse. 

He doesn’t know why that makes his heart skip a beat. Maybe it’s just the realization of how big Kensei is. Renji spends most of his time towering over people like an awkward giant, it’s rare to be so close to someone who almost matches him in size. He’s a few good inches taller than Kensei and nearly just as broad, but Kensei has a certain weight to him. He’s solid. He has gravity. 

Kensei kisses Renji against the door, hard and quick. Like someone who is rough by nature but trying their hardest to be gentle. He tastes like the black tea they had at dinner, earthy and bitter. And Renji is struck with this warmth in his chest, this sense that Kensei is safe. That he will never hurt him, on purpose or by accident. 

Renji knows that doesn’t make sense. It’s so easy to hurt people, even the people that you love. Sometimes you hurt them just because you’re bad at loving them. Not that he’s attributing whatever Kensei and him have to any sort of love, it’s only the first date and not even Renji is that pathetic. 

Kensei begins to pull away, and Renji chases him back. Kensei is gentle, but he is not. Renji is teeth on lips, a hand curled into the front of Kensei’s clothes and pulling him in, nails catching the back of Kensei’s neck. 

He takes a moment to enjoy this as it is, the shape of Kensei pressing him against the sturdy support of the door. Renji could melt against the wall here, compressed under that safe, crushing weight. 

Then Renji pushes back, dropping his own weight against Kensei and driving both of them to step backwards. Whether simply surprised or just agreeable to giving up control, Kensei lets himself be driven back, a grunt escaping his mouth into Renji’s when the back of his legs hit the low shape of the couch. Renji pushes Kensei down onto the couch, hands on his wide shoulders and standing over him. 

He likes this look on Kensei’s face. Brown, hazy eyes looking up at him. Expectant, patient, wanting. Renji stoops down low to press his smile against Kensei’s lips. 

“I’m glad you came home with me.” 

“Yeah. Same.” 

Renji grins, running his fingers through Kensei’s silver hair. It’s not quite as soft as he imagined, there’s a slight stiffness. Hairspray, probably. Still fun to touch. “Can I suck you off?”

Kensei blinks, this angle giving Renji a stellar view of him looking up at Renji’s face from under heavy lids and black eyelashes. “Sure.” 

He feels very proud of himself as he’s sinking onto his knees. This is almost certainly some kind of workplace policy violation, or it would be if they had an HR department. 

His fingers undo the knot holding Kensei’s obi together, the black and white swathes of fabric falling open and revealing planes of tan, sculpted skin. Kensei’s chest is bound with muscle-- not tight vanity muscles but a real, solid mass of power. The kind of body that can take a hit and throw one back. Renji wants to drag his teeth over every curve of those abs until he leaves red marks. 

Kensei’s tattoo is put on display, bold lines of black ink as dark and rich as fresh newsprint. That distinctive 69, and Renji has to try really hard not to be reminded of Shuuhei’s face because he can’t afford to think of that right before giving his captain a blowjob. 

No, he’ll just focus on how the black of that ink matches the black of Renji’s own stripes. He drags his thumb over the angle of the six, feeling the swell of Kensei’s chest under his touch when he inhales. Perhaps he’s ticklish? That’s cute.

It isn’t ticklishness. Among the many scars that are scattered across Kensei’s skin like craters on the moon, there are two distinct lines that curve under each of his pectorals. A red, raised line of jagged flesh, bracketing his tattoo like skeletal wings or a broken halo. Surgical cuts, where the flesh and fat was intentionally removed. Where a transformation took place. 

Renji wants to ask about them, if they hurt or if it’s okay to touch them. Where he got the surgery, because it certainly doesn’t look clean enough to be the Fourth Division. But it isn’t his business, and he’s got work to do here. 

He pulls Kensei’s hakama down under the waistband of his boxers, gray cotton tight against his skin. The taste of fabric and sweat lay thick on Renji’s tongue as he pressed his mouth against the covered shape of Kensei’s dick. 

A long exhale escapes Kensei’s nose, and Renji assumes it’s him relaxing. Incorrect.

“You’re not using protection.” Kensei says with an obvious note of disapproval in his voice.

Renji pulls his face out of Kensei’s crotch long enough to look up. “Hm?”

“You should always use protection during your first sexual encounter with a new partner. Everybody knows that.”

“Do you have something contagious?” Renji asks, trying hard to keep looking at Kensei’s face instead of making direct eye-contact with the inviting outline of his cock. 

“No--”

“It’s okay if you do. But I need ya’ to give me a heads up--”

“I don’t.” 

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Then it’s okay if we don’t wrap it up this time, right?”

Kensei’s expression is bordering on a glare. A genuine kind, not the squinting because his eyes are shit kind. His arms are stiff at his sides, fingers gripping the couch cushions underneath him. 

“You don’t know my sexual history. I could be lying, just tellin’ you whatever you need to hear to let me fuck you.” Renji very wisely doesn’t comment on this. “You can’t be so trusting of people.”

Renji’s not sure anyone has ever accused him of being too trusting. But at any rate, he wishes that they could have had this conversation before he was on his knees with Kensei’s pants down. He’s using up the valuable time he has before his knees hurt. 

“I’m not sure you’re even capable of lying.” The look that Renji receives didn’t seem to be moving the dial in his favor. Man, he really was gonna have to get up now, wasn’t he? “Alright, I’ve got condoms in my drawer, I’ll grab one--” 

“That’s not the point. I’m just saying you need to be more careful.” 

Renji’s hands are resting on Kensei’s legs, palms resting on the curve of his calves. He can’t say that he doesn’t get it, that Kensei wants him to be safe because he wants everybody to be safe, in his own bossy way. He hates watching people make stupid mistakes they could have easily avoided. So Renji must be a hugely infuriating presence. 

Is this a stupid decision right now? What does it say about Renji that he pursued an authority figure with an important presence, but who was distant enough that Renji didn’t have to see him if he didn’t want to? What does it say that Renji spent the whole night trying to figure out how to squeeze as much affection out of Kensei as possible, up until Kensei turned the mirror back on Renji and he growled at his own reflection like a dumb puppy? 

His thumbs dig into Kensei’s skin through the thick cotton of his clothes, rubbing little circles into his leg. 

“We don’t have to do this, y’know. We can just, like, take a bath and go to bed or something.” 

Kensei snorts. “This is  _ not  _ you being pushy, kid. If you were, I’d let you know. And I didn’t say that I didn’t want it.” 

Rough, cool hands touch the side of Renji’s face. Why does Kensei run so cold? Like iron. His touch isn’t that forced gentleness from earlier, but more confident and firm. When he tilts Renji’s head up and makes him look at Kensei’s face, it’s with the knowledge that he could turn and twist Renji around whichever way. The forced eye-contact is kind of jarring, Renji looks up this time into the captain’s eyes instead of smugly looking down.

“Listen, Renji,” Kensei says. His tongue rolls the ‘R’ a little when he says the name, the accent of a former delinquent if ever there was one. “You’re a sweet little thing, but you gotta look out for yourself. Take shit seriously once in a while.” 

God, Renji is so fucked. He’s in such, such deep shit. Kensei being all worried and nice to him sends a strange, fluttery flushed feeling up Renji’s neck, but that’s nothing compared to the way that the words  _ sweet little thing _ are bouncing around the inside of his skull at 90 miles an hour. 

Nobody is supposed to worry about Renji. He’s the guy who can take a hit, maybe even a thousand hits, and keep on trucking. He works hard, so hard that he almost kills himself, and that’s fine because everyone knows that’s just how he is.

No one is supposed to gently scold him, to reassure him. And no one especially is supposed to call him  _ sweet little thing _ !

“I- uh,” Renji stammers, which is about the sexiest thing you can do. 

Kensei’s brows raise. “Are you gettin’ turned on by me lecturing you?” His voice sounds half-accusatory.

Renji’s face must be fucking  _ burning  _ Kensei’s palms. “That’s… not- _ not  _ what’s happening.”

A sigh rolls out of Kensei’s chest, but he doesn’t sound mad or disappointed which is a very good sign. 

Kensei slides one hand down Renji’s face, palm holding up his chin. He seems to be looking real deep into Renji’s eyes with this expression of fascination and confusion, like someone trying to read a book written in a language they don’t know. 

“You are a piece of work, you know that?” 

He does. Kensei’s thumb touches the corner of Renji’s mouth and Renji, his pride cannibalizing itself like the Oroborous, wastes no time opening his mouth and closing his lips around it. 

Renji works his tongue around the digit before giving it a gentle suck, feeling the weight of Kensei watching him like a layer of gravity pressing down on his body. It’s tempting to give into that gravity, to let his bones collapse on the floor. 

He grabs Kensei’s hand and turns it, sliding his thumb out of Renji’s mouth and replacing it with an index and middle finger. Renji uses his tongue to push them against the soft side of his mouth, to graze his teeth over calloused skin. His eyes close, focusing on Kensei’s large fingers in his mouth and not his dick starting to strain against his underwear. 

Kensei’s breaths fall heavy on Renji’s ears, each one like a sigh. A rumble of encouragement, the glow of approval. When Renji takes Kensei’s fingers out of his mouth a thin line of saliva connects them to his lips. Renji nips him a little bit, to show that just because he’s really showing his soft little bitch side right now he can still be bossy. 

The room is full of slow, relaxed breathing, laid over the sound of Renji’s blood rushing in his ears. He’s not surprised that Kensei isn’t chatty right now, his quiet fixation on Renji is enough, letting Renji monopolize all of his attention. 

Still, Renji is Renji. He needs something to break the quiet. 

“Hey,” His fingers curl around the waistband of Kensei’s boxers, playing with the fabric. “Can you say it again?”

Above him, Kensei’s lips twitch. It’s almost the shape of a smirk, and it looks lopsided and sideways on his face. Satisfaction is uncommon on him. “Say what?”

Renji leans his head against Kensei’s knee, face pressed into his thigh. And he’s not sure whether this is the best time to discover a new kink or the worse time. “That thing that you called me.”

“What?” Renji doesn’t want to look up and see what kind of face Kensei is giving him. “Sweet little thing?”

God, that’s the ticket. Renji drags down Kensei’s underwear and gets ready to open wide.

He doesn’t know what to expect, trusting that whatever kind of equipment Kensei has is fine as long as he can get his mouth around it. And yet somehow he’s surprised-- not by the size, although Renji is not mad about that at all. But more by the flash of gold because Kensei has a dick piercing. 

Right there on the underside of the shaft is a little gold barbell. God, this is such a good dick. A reliable dick. A dick with character. A dick you could really settle down with. 

Renji draws his tongue around Kensei’s length, hot skin and smooth metal piece and all. One of his hands wraps around the base and the other fumbles to get into his own pants. His palm rubs against his front, fabric sliding against his cock. 

Kensei’s slow breaths start to come out faster and louder, Renji wants to say that it was okay to touch him but his mouth is occupied. He takes Kensei’s head in, beginning to bob up and down. 

It’s been a little bit since Renji last did this, but the strain in his jaw was familiar. As is the smell of sweat and sex, the taste of skin. This intoxicating scent that he just associates with men. Musk? Is that what musk is? Just man-smell? That doesn't sound correct.

Renji remembers to mind his teeth, to fasten his lips tightly over Kensei and draw his tongue over the rise of his metal piercing. Renji looks up, trying to find Kensei’s face through the curtains of red threatening to stick to his forehead and cheeks. He knew he should have grabbed a damn hair tie. 

Pink blossoms in Kensei’s cheeks, lighting him up. His shoulders are tight, body leaning back, and chest swelling with every staggered inhalation. One of his hands grips the couch armrest and the other is clenching the cushion underneath him, both white-knuckled. Renji stops petting himself to pry Kensei’s hands away and guide them to his head, like he’s showing Kensei how to thread the strands of his hair through his fingers. 

Kensei receives the message quickly, stroking Renji’s hair and grabbing handfuls of it, though never pulling. He’s very cognizant of how much force he’s using on Renji, he doesn’t want to be rough.

A groan rumbles out of Kensei’s throat, fingers clenching fistfulls of Renji’s hair and he feels that grip between his legs. “Renji.”

“Mmhmm?” Renji hummed around his mouthful of Kensei.

“Get up here.” 

He comes off of Kensei dick with a louder, wetter noise than he intended, bringing his sleeve up to wipe an excessive amount of saliva off of his face. Hot. 

Renji crawls up onto Kensei’s lap, Kensei’s hands on his waist to steady him and Renji’s hands on his shoulders. Kensei yanks off Renji’s shihakusho, though he’s being significantly impeded by Renji kissing his lips, his cheek, his neck.

“ _ Yes _ ,” Renji sighs into Kensei’s neck, rocking his body against Kensei from his position straddling his thighs. Kensei has to work against Renji’s constant wiggling to pull down his underwear. “Shit, Kensei--”

Kensei’s hand works Renji with urgency, and he feels unbearably hot. Especially where Kensei touches him, but also everywhere else. Kensei’s other hand holds a tight grip on Renji’s hip to keep him from losing balance and humping himself right off of Kensei’s lap. 

His head feels fuzzy, Renji keeps panting and moaning into Kensei’s shoulder as he hurtles closer and closer to finishing. It was so, so  _ good _ , being this physically close and being touched this nice. It’s not too soft and it’s not too rough. Just right there in the middle. 

He bites down on Kensei’s neck as he comes, the strangled sound of Kensei’s surprise sounding like it’s underwater in Renji’s ears. 

When Renji is capable of thought again, he is aware of Kensei letting out a huge, relieved sigh and sinking back against the couch. Renji bonelessly collapses against his chest. “Fuck, dude.”

Kensei rubs circles into Renji’s thigh. “You good?”

“Yeah,” Renji reaches an arm around and under his curtain of now quite sweaty hair, pushing it aside to get some cool air on the back of his neck. “That was. Good. That was really good!” 

He could fall asleep immediately right here. The countdown had begun to Ultimate Sleepy Time, and Renji can only delay the inevitable. Still, he makes himself stay awake just a little longer. 

“D’you want a bath?”

Renji can feel Kensei’s hum echo in his chest. “Yeah, that sounds nice.” 

Kensei’s fingers trace nonsensical patterns and figures into Renji’s back, making it even more difficult to work up the initiative to move. Reluctantly, he rolls off of Kensei’s lap and onto the cushions beside him.

“You wanna go first?”

“You sure?”

“Mmmmmhmmmmm.” Renji sinks into the cushions. He angles one arm against the arm rest and uses his hand to support his head. He’s really sweaty and probably could use the shower before stinking up his bed, but he already knows he isn’t gonna make it. 

Kensei sis up, adjusting his pants and putting his dick back in. He rolls his shoulders until they audibly pop and straightens his back, making to get up before he looks over to Renji reclining. Faster than his sleepy brain could process, Kensei leaned over and gave him a quick kiss. Aww, that was cute. 

“Get your ass to bed.” 

Once Renji is left alone, he finally pulls himself off the couch. A big yawn rips out of his mouth and he totters over to his futon, shedding the rest of his clothes along the way. 

The sheets are nice and cool as Renji crawls underneath them, he doesn’t even care they’re gonna be smelly and gross tomorrow. He snuggles up to his pillow, latently thinking that it’s gonna be a tight squeeze in this twin-sized futon when Kensei gets out of the shower. 

He can hear the faucet running in the bathroom, the faint scent of steam beginning to creep out from the gap in the door

If Renji were more alert, he would worry about what tomorrow will look like. Like if he’ll have to stop hanging out with Kensei because it’ll be weird now. That is a problem for Tomorrow Renji. 

* * *

It’s not like Renji assumes that Kensei will be gone when he wakes up. He didn’t seem the type, he would at least wake Renji up or leave a note or something. Still, some part of him is prepared to wake up to quarters that are just as empty as they usually are.

Maybe that’s Renji’s abandonment issues talking. Or maybe he just wants to set himself up to be pleasantly surprised when Kensei is still hanging around. Set low expectations and never be disappointed. 

Except when he wakes up, there’s a curious addition to the apartment. Renji rubs the sleep from his eyes, runs fingers through his tangled, messy hair, and smells the curious scent of miso and steamed veggies. 

He slithers into a fresh, slightly crumpled uniform and stumbles out of the bedroom. Sure enough. Kensei is taking up the majority of his tiny kitchenette just by standing at the stove. He’s not wearing a shirt, which doesn’t strike Renji as particularly safe cooking behavior. Though it is certainly appreciated.

“You need t’ buy groceries.” Kensei says by way of greeting. His hair is flattened down without the assistance of whatever product he uses. 

“Sorry.” Renji rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Why’d you make breakfast?”

“Because it’s the most important meal of the damn day.” Kensei says, taking the whistling kettle off of the stove. “You should take a shower while I finish this shit up. You were sticky in bed all night.”

There’s something very odd about hearing Kensei casually say ‘in bed’ like that, just shooting the shit like he isn’t talking about the fact that they fucked. It would be almost cute if the word ‘sticky’ weren’t involved in the sentence.

Dutifully, Renji trudges away from the smell of hot, cooking food and the handsome, half-naked man who guards it. And it’s only as he’s in the process of washing off that old, dry sweat (and some other fluids) from his skin that he wonders to what degree Kensei knew that he was sticky. 

Did his hand brush Renji’s back when he came back from the bath and joined him under the covers? Did their shoulders bump up against each other as Kensei tried to find room for both of their not exactly diminutive frames on the very small mattress?

Did their legs tangle together underneath the sheets? Did Kensei at one point put a hand to Renji’s shoulder to roll him over to make room? Now Renji regrets falling asleep so quickly, and feels cheated out of the opportunity to have had pillow talk or some tender, sweaty afterglow touches. 

Renji drags his comb through his freshly washed hair, making a little too much eye contact with himself in the bathroom mirror. The point of getting physical with Kensei in the first place was to meet a threshold for contact. That Renji was bored and lonely and doesn’t have a tremendous amount of direction in his life right now, and if he got involved with something else (Addendum: Something = Kensei’s dick) then he would feel renewed and refreshed and, well,  _ normal _ , for lack of a better word.

But it’s going to be hard to move on if Renji is already thinking again of the man who hasn’t even left his home. They spent about a solid eight or so hours together and Renji still manages to regret the six that he spent unconscious. 

He shouldn’t even be surprised. Renji develops new attachment issues like Ichigo develops new superpowers. Why should this be an exception? 

The breakfast that Kensei makes is basic, compiled from the meager bounty that he found while foraging in Renji’s kitchen, but warm and filling. Renji inhales it like a vacuum and doesn’t think about how he’s going to have to wash every single dish that he owns later. 

They have a quiet meal together, Kensei never one for small-talk and Renji still a little too out of it for holding conversation. Renji always thought he was the kind of person who could never sit in silence without wanting to gouge his own eyes out, but it’s different here. With Kensei, it always is. 

Conversation can quickly turn into a battleground in the Seireitei, especially if you’re someone like Renji who has a very tough time keeping a lid on his emotions. He has to overcompensate for his reputation as a loud-mouthed, hot-headed curr, and as a result he’s become adept at impressing people with what a good talker he is. 

It’s not difficult. People usually want to talk about themselves. They want to feel smart and important, because that’s what everyone in the world wants. Nobody would mistake Renji for a master manipulator or the next Aizen or whatever, he just knows those primal needs that every person has. Recognition, attention, a non-judgemental audience who receives even if they don’t really understand. And there is certainly a lot that Renji does not understand. 

The point of this tangent is-- Kensei never puts that pressure on Renji. Never expects him to carry conversation, to talk just for the sake of talk or do some performative listening. If Kensei has nothing to say, he just won’t. 

Though of course when Kensei does have something to say, he certainly won’t hesitate to share. But from his own tangent within a tangent, Renji digresses. 

At the end of the meal when Renji is all full and awake, he asks the big question.

“So, how do you wanna do this? I expect you don’t want to leave out the window, huh. That’s a little underneath your prestigious station.”

Kensei gives Renji a blank expression. He indicates the door with his chopsticks. 

“I mean, I’ve loved hosting you here but at some point you’re gonna have to leave. I thought maybe ya’ didn’t want eyes on you on your way out.”

Kensei’s brows furrow and he talks around a mouthful of rice. “Why should that matter?”

_ In case you didn’t want people to know you were slumming it with the 6th Division’s favorite attack dog _ . “I dunno. Just figured you wouldn’t want people in your personal business.”

“Would it bother you if people knew I was here?”

Renji pushes some pickled radish around on his plate. He should just lie and say no, that he doesn’t care at all. “I mean, it might be kinda awkward if people started talking about it. I wouldn’t want Hisagi to just, like, find out because he overheard some of my stupid subordinates gossiping.” 

“Well, I can’t promise nobody’s gonna notice when I walk outta here. But I’ll be… quiet.” Kensei pauses and adds. “To the best of my ability.” 

It’s weird how he says this. Like Renji is the one who would be embarrassed instead of the other way around. Although he guesses that he would be a little embarrassed-- there’s enough gossip going around about Renji and his own captain, it would bother him if people thought he was just hopping from squad leader to squad leader. 

Also, if there was going to be any juicy gossip about Captain Muguruma hooking up with someone, it should be a cute, sexy chick who fit under his arm. Someone soft and adorable to balance him out. 

Kensei finishes rearranging his clothes to look presentable, right after leaving a pile of filthy dishes and pots in the sink for Renji to wash. 

“I’m not gonna run into your captain out there in the hall, am I?”

“Nah, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him even come out of his quarters.” Didn’t make much sense to spend the night in the barracks when you have a nice, cozy, sprawling estate at home.

“Good.” The tip of Kensei’s tongue touches his lips as he fastens his gloves. He definitely looks like he’s just had a one-night stand, clothes and hair all disheveled. As well as a red, tender ring on the junction between his neck and his shoulder, half of which peeks very indiscreetly out from under his shirt collar. It doesn’t look like a love bite so much as like he was attacked by a wild animal in the night.

Consequences? For Renji’s actions? It’s more likely than you think. 

Renji is in the process of rinsing all of the plates he owns while Kensei gets ready to leave. Kensei makes a noise indicating that he desires attention and Renji looks up, seeing the silver-haired captain hovering by the door. 

“Hey,” he starts. “So…”

Renji gets ready for it. Some awkward fumbling and forced casualness, eventually leading up to the admission that this was a one-time thing. An indulgence, an experiment to see if they could fit together for the night and just see how their hands would feel on each other. But in the end it will establish that they are not lovers. After this, they might not even be friends. 

He waits to hear it, and then watches as Kensei moves towards him with uncharacteristic haste and kisses him. It’s quick and a little yucky because Kensei hasn’t brushed his teeth but Renji, hands still submerged in dishwater, kisses back. He doesn’t even mean to. He just does. 

“I’ll see you later, yeah?” Kensei asks.

And Renji answers automatically. “Yeah. For sure!” 

“Okay.” 

Renji watches Kensei turn and leave. And he feels like he’s definitely lost the plot.

  
  


* * *

Renji makes two appointments for later that day. One of them is to hang out with Rukia, because he misses her. All the time. 

She’s had her hands full running the entire 13th Division, so Renji excuses her for not giving him the amount of attention he usually demands. Plus, she likes to keep a close eye on the kids in Karakura, because despite them graduating from high school they’re all still her little ducklings, so that takes her time as well. 

So he wants to spend time with her. Check in on how she’s doing and stuff. 

His second appointment is with the 4th Division health clinic. 

“You know, when you said that you wanted to hang out, this isn’t what I had in mind.” 

Renji understands why she’s displeased. The chairs in the clinic waiting room are stiff and uncomfortable. Rukia is thumbing through a copy of the Seireitei Communication that is at least 3 decades old. She only has an hour before she has to lead a patrol, and is spending it half of it here. 

“You love doing errands with me.” He argues blandly.

“Yeah, I love shopping and getting food and stuff.” Rukia smooths the magazine over her lap, eyes looking through an ancient article about what bars were most popular in the Seireitei when they were both still in school. “Not taking you to get tested for STIs.”

Renji sinks into his chair, resenting the fact that Rukia won’t look up to see the sulk he’s sending in her direction. “Why can’t you just support me?”

He casts an eye up to the reception desk, manned by a lone 4th division officer who is supposed to call Renji up when his test is ready. It’s been about ten minutes since Renji was scheduled to be here, but every appointment at the Fourth Division Sexual Wellness Center goes late like some sick powerplay. 

Yes, you heard him. The 4th Division has a sexual wellness center. If Renji had to guess why, he would assume that shinigami are so depressed and horny that it eventually became more cost-effective to open a free clinic rather than try to cover up the countless scandals and viral outbreaks. 

“So, do I know him?” Rukia flips a page under her thumb. Her nails are painted light pink today and Renji wonders who did them since it obviously wasn’t him. “This guy who may or may not have given you an STI?”

“He didn’t.” Renji says flatly, knee bouncing in his seat. 

Rukia looks up from her magazine to shoot him a perplexed stare. “Then what exactly are we doing here?

“Proving a point.”

Rukia looks sorry that she even asked, shaking her head as if to shimmy off any errant particles of Renji’s nonsense that might potentially invade her brain and cause her to understand what the hell he’s talking about. “Of course. Can’t believe I didn’t think of that first. So-- do I know him?” 

He almost tells her, and then the name gets caught in his throat. The thing that Kensei said about keeping quiet bounces around in his head, as well as his question about if Renji would care if people knew. 

But telling Rukia isn’t the same as telling a hallway of random shinigami, or even telling all the members of his friend group. There’s no doubt that Rukia will keep it close to the chest, and he needs someone to bounce these confusing yet entirely self-inflicted feelings off of. 

“You know him.” Renji scratches his cheek, nails skimming the corner of his lips. Inadvertently, he remembers fingers in his mouth, lips pressed on his lips. “It’s Captain Muguruma.” 

It’s kind of gratifying to watch Rukia’s dark eyes fly open. She claps a gloved hand to her mouth as if to bury some instinctive reactionary noise behind her teeth. “You’re kidding.” 

“Nope.” Renji sinks further into his chair, arms folded over his chest. 

“Huh. I really didn’t see that coming.” Rukia’s surprise quickly transitions into thoughtfulness. Her eyes float upwards, like she’s reviewing and re-organizing the data in her head. “He’s not your usual type, is he? Or maybe it’s just because I didn’t know you two were that close.” 

It is a Mystery. “It’s kinda hard to explain.”

The expression that Rukia gives him urges Renji to elaborate, all raised eyebrows and pinched lips. He doesn’t rise to it, though, fixing his gaze in an empty corner of the sterile waiting room on one of the many chairs that are all the same color of washed out teal. 

“You don’t exactly seem happy about it.” Rukia prompts him. “Did it go bad?”

“No, not at all!” Renji answers too quickly, and winces at his overeagerness. Ever the excitable puppy, this one. “It was… it was nice. Really, really nice. Kensei’s surprisingly sweet.” 

Sweet, and stubborn, and funny, and he makes Renji’s stomach all fluttery. His body is all hard muscle but it yielded to Renji’s touch as if Kensei is hungry for a chance to relax against him, let go of all that weight he’s been holding in his bones for a century or more.

“I like him.” Renji says, feeling as self-conscious as if he were announcing it through a megaphone to the entire Seireitei instead of to Rukia in an empty waiting room. “I like him a lot, but I wasn’t supposed to. It was just… supposed to be a fling. A fun, impulsive thing so I could feel normal again and move on. And now I’m sitting here with my thumb up my ass, worrying ‘bout if he’s not gonna want to even see me again.” 

Rukia has the nail of her thumb in her mouth as she listens to him. The edge of her teeth are digging into the underside of it, risking messing up her polish. How undignified for a noble lady! 

“What do you mean ‘normal’?” She asks, and then reiterates when Renji stares at her. “You said you wanted something fun and impulsive to feel normal again. Do you feel unhappy?”

“Er-- yes? No? I don’t…” Renji loses his train of thought almost as soon as he opens his mouth. He looks down at his hands in his lap, and they feel far away from him. 

Is he unhappy? Everyone is sometimes, right? But is he more of an unhappy person than a happy person? Renji tries to review the last several years and weigh them. 

A catastrophic event. A rekindled friendship, and several new ones. Watching some of his closest friends fall into indescribably deep depression. A kidnapping. A war. A dozen near-death experiences. A friend lost then found again. Another war. Hundreds of people killed in Renji’s own city, all of his loved ones nearly destroyed. And that’s only the surface-level stuff. There’s too much to unpack.

“I mean,” Renji tries to find the words to sum up that very confusing series of memories he just speedran. “Has anybody really felt much of  _ anything _ since--”

Since the Blood War? Since Aizen? Blood War feels closer and more raw, like Captain-Commander Kyoraku just slapped a bandaid over it so they wouldn’t have to look at the oozing scab anymore. But the Betrayal feels like the jumping off point for when shit really went off the rains. 

There’s a beat of uncomfortable silence. Now Renji remembers why he hated the quiet so much. Rukia breaks it with a sigh that sounds like the wind. 

“I know.” Her voice is so heavy and low, Renji can hear it through the floor. “It’s like this big, empty pit we’re all walking around with. And I know that I should be grateful, because I certainly didn’t get the worst of it--” 

She stops mid-sentence and licks the outside of her teeth. Rukia is just as prone to spirals of self-hate as Renji is, she cannot stand the idea of complaining about her own life, which by anyone else’s account has been exceptionally, unspeakably difficult and certainly worthy of complaining about.

“On one hand, you hope nothing like that will ever happen again. That maybe, you know, the future really will be all blue skies and sunshine. No more war and pointless death. No one died in vain. At the same time,” Rukia’s legs are crossed, arms tucked into her body. She looks like a clenched fist. “At the same time, you hope to God that’s not the case. Because it will mean that we’ve already done the most important thing that we will ever do in our lives. We helped save the universe and now everything after is just… filler space. The future is pointless, it doesn’t need us in it.” 

Renji knows this. Feels it, though Rukia of course puts it in such devastating succinct terms that it aches fresh all over again. 

He also knows there’s some projection on Rukia’s part. She’s the one that they want to make captain of the 13th. She is the one who has already inherited Ukitake’s responsibilities and is staring down the barrel of doing it every single day for the next 100, 500, 20000 years. 

Renji has missed her so much. He misses every day he doesn’t speak to her. Now and during those lonely thirty years. He reaches over and holds her tiny hand in his. Her skin is cold. 

“Sorry.” Rukia clears her throat and shakes her head, brushing her hair back behind her ear with the free hand that Renji has not claimed. “That’s not helpful, is it?” 

“Don’t be sorry.”

“What I mean is-- or, I guess, what I should have been saying, is cut yourself some slack.” She unknots herself, relaxing her posture as if to escape the tension of the mostly one-sided conversation she just created. “You thought that perhaps fooling around with Muguruma would make you happy, so you did and now you caught feelings and just fooling around isn’t enough. Could it be that maybe  _ he _ is what is supposed to make you happy?”

Can Kensei make Renji happy? It feels selfish to think of it in those terms, Renji can’t hinge his entire emotional well-being on one person.

Unless Rukia means a smaller, more current kind of happy. Happy to spend time with him. Happy to talk to him and eat his food and kiss him in the dark. Those are minutes Renji can collect. 

“I’m confused.” Renji finally admits.

“That’s nothing new for you.” Rukia’s eyes slide closed. “I didn’t mean for this to get so heavy. We’ve got to lighten the mood. I’ll buy you dango after your appointment. How long do these tests usually take.”

“They’re pretty short. It’s just the waiting that’s long.” 

“They’re just gonna have you pee in a cup, right?”

“And take my blood.”

Rukia opens one eye. “Come to think of it, I’ve never been in this building. Do you come for STI checks a lot?”

“Just a few times.” Renji shrugs. His sex life is no secret to Rukia. “Gotta stay healthy, you know? And make sure I’m not spreading any shit around. Although this time it was because Kensei had something about how you can’t trust people to tell the truth, going all Mr. After School Special.”

Rukia furrows her brows and hums at that. “Have you ever gotten a test that, y’know, came back with bad news?” 

“No.” Renji says. “One time I thought I had trich, but it turned out to be a pimple.” 

Rukia looks understandably disappointed in him. She squeezes her eyes shut in an attempt to prevent any toxic mental images from invading her mindscape. “Muguruma is a lucky man.” 

The front desk attendant finally calls Renji’s name, and he gets up to go give his blood and his pee. Separately, not at the same time. 

* * *

It’s been about two days since the date, and Renji runs out of reasons to convince himself to not go talk to Kensei again. 

There’s a nasty little part of Renji that just wants to. Not. To not have the ‘what are we’ conversation and figure out his feelings. It’s like a splinter lodged in his palm, and every time he thinks about it he wants to wiggle it around even though he knows it’s going to hurt. Kensei will probably think he’s an asshole, but they’ll both survive. 

Problem is that he tried that already, when he ghosted Rukia for 30 years and had a terrible time of it. And when your plan for conflict avoidance contributes to a double-digit body count, it might just be easier to face the music. 

He comes up with an excuse, just in case it gets too awkward to endure and Renji needs to escape the situation. Shuuhei had been nagging him to bring in a new article for the Communication, though Renji doesn’t see why people care to read stuff he’s just barely pulling from his first year in academy. 

Renji doesn’t pretend to understand the publishing industry. He tells Shuuhei as much when he hands over the few scant pages he wrote. 

“You’d be surprised how many new recruits slide by without knowing this stuff.” Shuuhei says as he flips through, his good eye scanning Renji’s sloppy, slanted handwriting. “And they’re more likely to listen to you than some old, dusty textbook. Some of these kids seem to think you’re pretty popular.” 

“Ya think so, huh?”

Pretty convenient for Renji, then, that hundreds of shinigami were absolutely massacred a few years ago. Now every division is flooded with green new recruits, with too little experience under their belts and too much responsibility on their shoulders.

Well then.

“So we’re good, then?”

“Yeah, we’re good. Think I can squeeze it into next week’s issue. Unless-- shit, Kyoraku wants us to run that stupid fluff piece about some noble families getting hitched.” Shuuhei’s frown is deeper than usual, his jaw set while glaring holes into the papers in his hand. “What a waste of ink. I wouldn’t even bother, if he wasn’t holding our funding over our heads.” 

Renji’s eyebrows rise under his bandanna. It’s not rare for Shuuhei to get, well… intense about the paper, especially when deadlines start to hurtle closer. And he’s lamented enough about Kyoraku being on his case as editor, trying to get Shuuhei to only print pieces that make the Seireitei look like one, big, happy, post-war family.

Even so, Shuuhei is somehow more on edge than Renji even expected him to be. The shadows under his eyes are darker than usual, there’s a ragged, growly scrape to his voice. He’s angry and tired and stressed and he’s not gonna take it much longer before popping. 

He’s three weeks sober. Three weeks of only stressful, real, responsible life and without evening nightcaps to blot up all of his anxiety. 

“You okay, man?”

The look Shuuhei gives Renji is scathing. 

“Sorry I asked.” Renji rolls his eyes. But he has to be helpful, because he’s already decided to not be an asshole. And he kind of sympathizes with Shuuhei’s barely bottled-up rage. That burning, boiling heat that threatens to explode and doesn’t care who it scalds when it does. 

“Look, just don’t run the article.” Renji cuts Shuuhei off before he can interrupt. “Seriously. Fuck what Kyoraku wants, he ain’t running the paper. He wants the story so bad, I don’t see him down here writing it himself.” 

“He doesn’t have to. If he cuts our budget, our quality drops way down. And then if people stop reading because they think we’re shitting the bed, that just gives him more power to squeeze us.” There’s a sharp line of real misery behind Shuuhei’s angry complaining. He hates to lose more than anything, and the Communication is the biggest thing on the line. 

Also just the fact that having the head of the military also be in control of the newspaper is kind of terrifying. Shuuhei may be a shinigami, but he’s a journalist first and he takes his integrity so seriously that Renji can’t even begin to wrap his head around it. 

Renji’s theory that the Ninth Division has a problem with compulsive honesty holds an awful lot of water.

“People aren’t gonna stop reading.” Renji urges, and motions at the new  _ Let’s Do Bankai _ in Shuuhei’s hands. “I mean, c’mon. You’ve already got writing geniuses just giving away gold like that? It’s like I already did half your job for you.”

Shuuhei tries his best to stay angry, but a snort escapes him. You have to be at least a Level Three Friend to be able to cheer Shuuhei up out of a rage spiral.

“Yeah, maybe.” A heavy sigh of frustration. Teeth chewing on chapped lips. Renji has never met anyone in the world like Shuuhei Hisagi, though sometimes he wishes there were a few more out there. Trying to make the world better and shit. “We’ll see what happens, won’t we?”

Shuuhei rubs his tired, puffy eyes with his fingers, inadvertently smearing printer ink over his cheek. Black liquid smeared over his 69 tattoo. Renji’s stomach flip-flops as he remembers the reason he came here. His eyes compulsively slide to Kensei’s office door before he can stop them. 

Of course, this doesn’t go by unnoticed. “He should be in there, if you wanna drop in and say hi.”

The way Shuuhei says it so casually, Renji almost recoils from it. Then he remembers that Renji has been hanging around and acting friendly with his captain for a month and some change now, he must have cottoned on to the fact that Renji liked seeing Kensei.

Even if he didn’t see the flirting. 

“What if he’s working?”

Another snort. Shuuhei sounds like a petulant cow when he’s bemused. “I’ve seen him work. Not like you could make him do his paperwork any slower.” 

And just like that, Renji has his opening. 

Okay, like Shuuhei said, he’ll just drop in. Talk to Kensei a bit, get a feel for the vibes, and book it if it feels too weird. What could be simpler? 

He wishes he could tell that to his stomach. 

What Renji means is-- it  _ was _ a one-night stand, right? You don’t typically have sex on the first date and expect a long-term relationship unless you’re some kind of absolute madman. That kind of stuff only happens in trashy romantic novels that Renji definitely has never stolen from Rukia’s office. 

This is so stupid. Whatever. What-fucking-ever. Renji opens the door to Kensei’s office.

In retrospect, Renji should have knocked to let Kensei know he was coming in. But he is so, so glad that he did not. Because he gets to walk in to see Kensei sitting at his desk, wearing glasses. 

Little wire-frame reading glasses that look so tiny and delicate on Kensei’s broad face, slipping down his nose like a stereotypical librarian. His eyes leap up to the door as soon as Renji barges in, and Kensei quickly whips the glasses off with a tint of pink on his face.

Fuck. He’s so fucking cute. It’s not fucking  _ fair! _

“Hey,” Renji can’t stop himself from smiling, it’s not even worth trying. “Did I come at a bad time.”

“No.” Kensei very indiscreetly shoves his glasses into his desk drawer. There are red little marks on the bridge of his nose. “You showed up just in time. Now I can take a break without Shuuhei gettin’ on my case.” 

Against his better nature, Renji feels the tension he was holding in his gut unwind. Kensei is acting totally normal, like this is just any other day that Renji would come to see him. 

Kensei had accused Renji of trusting him too easily, and maybe he has a point. But Renji really didn’t think of how ready he was to think the worst of Kensei, of how ready he was to be tossed aside like old laundry. 

We don’t have time to unpack that right now.

Kensei makes lunch in the 9th division break room for both of them. One of these days Renji should be the one bringing food for a change, but he knows that Kensei likes to cook and the most elaborate thing that Renji can make is onigiri so that’s kind of a non-starter. 

He expresses as much to Kensei, who looks nonplussed.

“In the human world, I cooked almost every day for seven people. And Hachi was vegan. Setting something aside for you is nothing.” 

They eat together in Kensei’s office, the forms that he was supposed to be filling out being disdainfully used as placemats. Renji’s not sure who is gonna get pissed about teriyaki sauce on those later, but he imagines someone has to. 

As usual, Kensei isn’t one for idle chit-chat, though he’s full of his usual complaints and grumbling and whingeing. Soi Fon didn’t appreciate his ‘helpful corrections’ on the memo she sent him, Renji doesn’t know if Kensei even means to antagonize her or if he just can’t stop himself. 

“What’s she gonna do, get Central 46 to exile me?” 

“That’s your favorite line to use when you wanna get your way, isn’t it?” Renji grins. 

Kensei shrugs, scowling in his usual way. “Wish it worked. Apparently being petty only works around here if you happen to have a secret police force behind your back. I think she’s still just pissed at me ‘cuz I wasn’t sad about Yamamoto kicking the bucket. Amazing that someone so haughty and stubborn could be such a boot-licker.” 

“Not that you’d know anything about being stubborn.” Renji leans back in his chair, watching Kensei’s lips twitch in that split-second smirk. 

“I guess we’re both ones to talk.”

Man, this is nice. So nice that Renji isn’t sure what he was worried about in the first place. He likes listening to Kensei talk about bullshit, hearing that low rumble like thunder in his voice when he really starts going and his voice gets so deep that Renji can hear it vibrate in his chest. Looking at the tan plane of skin where there used to be a mark in the shape of Renji’s mouth and thinking about how hard he’d have to suck on it to leave a bruise. 

He wonders if anyone else had noticed that bite mark. They’d have had to, right? And even though they didn’t know it was Renji, they’d know Kensei had been  _ claimed _ by someone. In his seat, Renji’s foot bounces against the floor. He feels excitable, like a puppy with a new toy. He wants to get his teeth on it again. 

Kensei’s eyes flicker to Renji’s bouncing knee, a wrinkle appearing between his brows. “You’re fidgeting.” It holds no judgement of an accusation, just an observation. 

“I was thinking,” Renji begins, because when he feels a sudden wave of confidence he knows that he’s gotta ride it out before it can abandon him and he loses his nerve. “I really liked spending the night with you. Maybe we could do it again?”

In the second it takes Kensei to process what Renji just said, he already manages to fumble over himself.

“I mean-- like, if you want to, obviously! If that’d be cool. I guess.” 

Hello, caller. You’ve reached the smooth operator hotline. Abarai Renji here to take your call. 

“Renji.” 

Renji leans in, cocking his head. “Yeah?”

Kensei’s face splits open in a grin, a rare flash that is all teeth and a little wrinkle between the corner of his lip and his cheek. Renji’s stomach flip-flops. “Are you gonna come over here or not?”

He comes over there, Kensei leaning back as Renji bends down. Kissing him feels as good as it did the first time. Like a heavy sigh, like stretching out after an intense work-out. Contraction, then release. 

Renji’s back is facing the door as they kiss, so he does not hear the door slide open and slam against its frame. 

“Kensei! Have you seen--” 

Ah. Shit. Renji pulls away, body frozen as if he thinks that if he stands perfectly still he will turn invisible. Nope, nothing to see here. Kensei is the one who looks to the side of Renji’s head, a seething glare radiating in the direction of the doorway. 

“Rose,” His voice is dangerously tight. There’s about to be yelling. “The door. It’s closed. You forget how to knock?”

Renji looks over his shoulder at Captain Otoribashi standing in the threshold, his eyes darting between Renji and the captain underneath him. “Oh my!” Behind the hand held over his mouth, Rose’s lips fail to contain their smile. He attempts to muffle how absolutely elated he looks, like a cat that just caught the mouse. 

“Pardon me, am I interrupting something?”

“Lil’ bit.” Renji answers, and Rose’s Cheshire smile widens. 

“Get  _ out! _ ”

Rose dodges the pencil holder that Kensei chucks at his head, bouncing off the wall and scattering pens and the like all over the floor. 

“Yep, got it!” The door slams shut behind Rose. 

“Hold on! Don’t go running off to Shinji and Lisa--  _ shit! _ ” Kensei tries to stand up, forgetting that Renji is still perched over him, and the top of his skull collides hard with Renji’s nose. Renji reels back from the dizzying impact, almost losing balance and landing on his ass before Kensei catches him via a hand on the waist. “Fuck! Sorry.”

“‘M good.” Renji says, ignoring that Kensei narrowly avoided breaking his nose for the second time. “Are we, uh. Are we chill? Should we get outta here?”

“Yeah,” Kensei mutters grumpily. “And find a door with a lock on it.”

  
  


* * *

Despite all of Renji’s personal drama, the world keeps turning. That’s just kind of how it’s always been. The world could be ending, his life could be crumbling in front of his very eyes as he clings to the last thread of his sanity, and he’ll still show up for work. Byakuya will be ready for him, half an hour early and with at least 3 assignments he wants Renji to redo because he doesn’t like the kind of pen he used or whatever. 

It’s funny. Used to be that all Renji wanted to do was work. To come to this important office every day, to feel important and make important decisions. Then he realized that 90% of his decisions don’t matter to 90% of people. And that he is now inarguably an important person to the collective history of Soul Society, but he doesn’t  _ feel _ important.

More importantly, he spends more time wanting to get out of the Sixth Division than into it. Even going to the SASG is a relief. And not just because it’s full of some of Renji’s favorite people.

They’ve been coming here once a week for over a month now, Isane bubbling about how proud she is of them. It’s a little patronizing, but also nice. Renji will take validation anywhere he can dig it up. 

Renji senses some guilt hanging around their circle. Everyone wants to complain about how hard it’s been adjusting to the new rules, about their cravings and about how embarrassing it is to explain to people why they’ve changed their habits. But no one wants to admit that and make everyone uncomfortable.

Nobody but Izuru. 

“Mostly, my biggest problem is that I’m bored now.” He announces during a beat of silence that stretched on too long. “But it’s not the kind of thing I can just fill up. It’s like a long, suffocating boredom. It’s like breathing in a box with too little air, all you can focus on is trying to control your lungs.”

Izuru gets a little bit healthier every day. A little bit pinker in the skin, a little bit bluer in the eyes. But it’s too little too late, he still looks washed out and gray. He knows it. He catches Renji’s eye when he stares too long, wondering where that bright, happy little kid that he met in school went. 

No, that’s shitty. It’s not like that kid is gone. Izuru might not like it, but he can’t take Renji’s memories of him away. 

“When I was sad, I could drink myself half-dead and it would just soak up all that misery. For a few hours it was a huge relief, I felt like a person again. I could talk to people, I could smile and laugh at jokes. I could even sleep.” Izuru continues, one leg folded over the knee, all casual as if he was discussing the weather. 

He likes the way that Momo, Rangiku, Shuuhei, Isane and yes, Renji, avert their eyes from the discolored, mottled scar that rises up the side of his neck and try not to think of the many times they’ve seen Izuru drink too much but didn’t say anything. 

Izuru doesn’t mean to be sadistic. He doesn’t even mean to be mean. But Renji knows exactly how it is sometimes, when you just want to hurt something. You’ll lash out at whatever’s closest to you just so you can feel your fist collide with something real. 

“Even after the war, I could at least get wasted and lose a few hours. I didn’t have to think about things.” Izuru finishes. “Now there are too many hours in the day. The nights are too long, and I’m still here.”

Isane, understandably, doesn’t really know how to respond to this. But she tries, goddammit. She tries to understand him.

“Could it be that what you’re feeling isn’t apathy, but isolation?” She suggests firmly. “You don’t need distraction from being alone. You’re distracted by your loneliness.” 

Izuru swirls his juicebox like he’s oxygenating an exotic cabaret and takes a delicate sip. “Perhaps.”

* * *

The group splits up after the meeting, Momo promises to bring cookies next week. Izuru begins making his trek back to the 3rd Division, but Renji jogs to catch up with him.

“Kira.”

“Abarai.”

“Fellow associate.” 

Izuru gives Renji a sardonic roll of the eyes. “Yes, how can I help you?” 

Renji bumps against Izuru with the corner of his elbow, making the smaller shinigami slide a little bit off his feet before correcting his trajectory. “It’s been a minute since we got lunch together. I wanna get ramen.”

“I’m not really hungry.”

“Tea, then.” 

Izuru’s eyes are half-lidded, watery blue tucked under long, blond lashes. He’s regarding Renji with something like frustration and suspicion. 

“I’ve told you this before, Renji, you don’t need to pity me. What I said during the session was not, as Kotetsu might put it, a ‘cry for help’, it’s just simply how I feel. You don’t need to check up or hover around me because you feel bad for me.”

“Oh yeah? And what about what she said about you isolating yourself?” Renji counters. “So you meant all that stuff, then? About being bored all the time.”

Izuru averts his eyes, frown deepening on his pallid face. He doesn’t like being argued with, and he’s a sore loser. “Whatever. And I suppose you’re assigning yourself my full-time chaperone, then?”

“No, but I know someone who might be gunning for the position.” 

Izuru can’t smother his curiosity. He looks at Renji with a mix of anger and anticipation.

Renji raises his eyebrow. “You’re kidding, right? Anybody with eyes could see that Hisagi’s head-over-heels for you.”

“Urgh.” Izuru’s lip curls, but the rest of his face looks sad and frustrated. Angry lines setting in around his pale, watery eyes, brows tightening. “I just… don’t think it would work out. He is my best friend, I’d only end up hurting him.”

Renji rubs the back of his neck, nails skimming the skin under his ponytail. “Are you sure that’s not just a self-fulfilling prophecy that you made up so that you don’t have to try putting yourself out there?”

A wry scoff comes out of Izuru’s thin lips. “Are you sure you’re not just trying to set me up with Hisagi so you won’t have to feel guilty that you’re fooling around with his captain?”

Ouch. Renji grimaces, lips barring over teeth. “Fuck off.” 

“I’m not saying you have impure intentions or anything.” Izuru doesn’t even recoil from his outburst, though he lowers his voice like he’s trying to ease Renji down from his spikey anger. “And I’m aware of Hisagi’s feelings.” 

Izuru’s walking pace slows down, his feet coming to stop in the middle of the road. Renji doesn’t fully notice for two more paces before he halts and backtracks to Izuru’s side.

“I don’t know. If it’s a doomed endeavor from the beginning, I would rather not go through the trouble of getting Shuuhei tangled in… in me.” Izuru’s teeth grind. “Maybe I just can’t be around people anymore.” 

“Yeah, maybe.” 

“Maybe?”

Renji shrugs, throwing up his hands. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s no way it’s gonna work out, you an’ Shuuhei are doomed for failure, you’re gonna be sad and bored forever and everything sucks! The end.”

“Delightful. Thanks, Renji. You know how to lift my spirits.”

“But--” Renji plows right ahead before Izuru can continue being sardonic. “Maybe you’re wrong. Did you think of that, Smart Boy? And even if it doesn’t work out, that doesn’t mean Shuuhei’s gonna abandon you. He cares about you, just that Matsumoto, and Hinamori, and I care about you. Because, y’know,” Renji coughs and looks anywhere other than Izuru’s face. “We love you and stuff.” 

When he dares to look back, he can see that cutting smile. The thin-lipped smirk that Renji hasn’t seen in what looks like years. And just like that, Izuru’s entire face opens up and for a second he looks like a boy again. 

“You have such a way with words.” He says. There are premature crow’s feet around his eyes. They wrinkle when he smiles. “Thanks. I love you too, ‘and stuff’.” 

Renji nearly shoves Izuru off the sidewalk. Izuru slaps his arms with his bony little hands. It’s like they can almost remember being children again.

“So,” Izuru says after slaps and between pants of breath. “What are you going to do about Muguruma?”

“Oh yeah, I guess your captain told you about that, huh?” Renji grimaces, and Izuru nods his head sympathetically.

“From my own observations, and the fact that Captain Otoribashi considers keeping secrets to be an antiquated habit. Apparently, he saw Muguruma come in a few days ago with a love-bite on his neck. I assume this was your handiwork?” 

“An accident!” 

Call Renji a liar and a fraud. But no one could ever accuse him of being subtle.

Izuru’s eyebrows rise, he puts his fist to his lips thoughtfully. “So are you two, like, an item now? If it’s only a physical relationship, then I wouldn’t worry too much about when to tell Hisagi. But if it’s romantic...”

Renji grimaces. He doesn’t like that word, ‘romantic’. It’s too soft. Too fragile.

“We’re not dating.” Renji says firmly, and then immediately begins to second-guess himself. “I mean-- no, we’re definitely not. We’re like… pre-dating, at most. We don’t do any of that lovey-dovey stuff.”

“Do you two go on dates?” Izuru asks, cocking his head in an owlish way.

He has to think about that. Renji folds his arms over his chest. “What counts as a date?” Does eating food that Kensei makes count as a date? Does visiting his office just to chat and gripe about his captain count?

“I believe the definition is any occasion spent with another person you have an interest in.”

“Well, that can’t be right. That’s way too broad!”

“I don’t make the rules. I just lyricize them.” Izuru folds his hands, the tips of his fingers touching his lips. “As a dead man, I can tell you with absolute certainty that your condition is terminal. I think that you may be dating Captain Muguruma.”

“Oh shit.” It’s not anything Renji hasn’t thought of before, but hearing it from someone else hits differently. Rukia and Izuru are now the only people he’s told (consensually) and it’s the first taste of what it will feel like to go public.

Which feels… funny. Kensei seems like he could care less whether people knew that he and Renji were screwing around or whatever. Though he didn’t seem thrilled about Rose blabbing to the other visored. And what if things  _ did _ get emotionally involved? What if it did put a strain on his relationship with Shuuhei to know that his captain was dating one of his closest friends?

“Should I break up with him?

He almost doesn’t realize he’s said it out loud, until the sound of his own voice echoes in his ears. 

Izuru looks… uncomfortable, but also pragmatic. His long fingers interlock together like spider legs. “Do you  _ want  _ to break up with him? Perhaps you’re thinking about this too dramatically.”

God. When Izuru calls you dramatic, you know it’s time to reel back. 

Renji doesn’t want to break up with Kensei. Or pre-break-up with him. But he doesn’t want to be a huge fuck-up who makes Kensei miserable when he inevitably realizes that Renji is undesirable and always has been. 

“What if I just screw everything up?”

“Maybe it will,” Izuru says smarmily, spreading out his arms and making his voice raspy in what Renji considers to be a poor and offensive imitation. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s no way it’s going to work out, and you and Muguruma are just doomed for failure, and everything sucks forever.”

“Smart-ass.” Renji seethes, setting his hands on his hips. “Okay, fine. I see your point.” 

He hopes that the little anti-pep talk he so bravely and blindly handed out ends up working-- for both Izuru, and himself. 

  
  


* * *

“Do you wanna come over to my place?”

Renji perks up immediately. “Can I?”

Kensei looks at him like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and to him it probably is. “Of course. Just to warn ya’ though, it’s not anything special.”

He’s correct. The 9th Division captain’s quarters are only slightly larger than Renji’s own. There’s a full kitchen and the main room is a bit bigger, but other than that the set-up is identical. 

Well, of course it is. Even on a captain’s salary, not everyone can afford huge, sprawling estates with a fleet of personal servants. Kensei’s only other home was in the World of the Living. He has nowhere else to go but here.

It’s even less sparsely decorated than Renji’s quarters, although there are a few flairs of Kensei’s real personality scattered around. There's a small army of glass containers holding various exotic spices sitting on the kitchen counter. But the biggest thing is a poster on the wall, edges frayed from being taken down, moved and taped back up. A man in a white uniform and black helmet, grasping one of those things that Renji has seen Jinta swinging around, except made of wood instead of cold metal.

“Who’s this?”

Kensei double-takes between Renji and the guy on the poster, and Renji sees his eyes light up in a way he’s never seen before.

“That’s Suzuki Ichiro!” He says, once again like this should be totally obvious. “One of the best baseball players ever. He broke the record for most hits by any player in the professional leagues.” 

“Sounds like a big deal.” Renji says this instead of what he’s actually thinking, which is ‘ _ what the FUCK is baseball?’ _

“It is.” Kensei says, setting up two cups for tea. “I guess it hasn’t caught on around here yet, huh? But it’s a huge thing in the human world, one of the better modern sports in my opinion.”

Ah, okay. So it’s a sport! Renji reassesses the poster. “Well, I’ll bet it’s no futsal.” Suzuki looks unmoved by his critique. “How do you play?”

“Nope.” Kensei announces very abruptly, looking quite stubborn.

Renji stares before echoing back, “Nope?”

“I’m not even gonna try to explain it, it’s too complicated.” Kensei shakes his head. Usually when people tell Renji that something is too complicated, they really mean that they think he’s stupid. Kensei diffuses that suspicion immediately when he gives Renji a very bald look. “Seriously. If I tried to explain the rules of baseball, you’d end up more confused than when you started. I’d probably end up confused, too.”

Renji leans against the wall, careful not to land anywhere on the poster. It looks quite fragile, but well-cared for. Not a crinkle or tear in sight. “Maybe we should just go to a game sometime, an’ I can see for myself!” 

Kensei’s face seems to open up, eyes widening with surprise. “You’d seriously wanna do that?”

“Yeah, sure.” Renji grins. 

He continues to look at Kensei, feeling his lips ache in a smile, until Kensei finally starts to look uncomfortable and shift on his feet where he stands. “What?”

“You’re cute.” 

Pink spreads up Kensei’s neck and across his face so deliciously. “Shut the fuck up.” 

* * *

Kensei is unyielding in many things. And there is something that is almost frightening in that, in someone whose opinions and feelings are indomitable. More so than Kensei’s physical power, than the hollow-self that lives inside him, what scares Soul Society is Kensei’s independence. He doesn’t need the Gotei. The only reason he came back was because he wanted to, not because there wasn’t a choice.

Maybe that’s kind of what makes Renji nervous about getting attached to Kensei. He doesn’t need Renji either. And Renji is such a needful thing. 

But God, does Renji live for those moments where he feels like he can give Kensei the whole world. And for as much as Kensei likes things his own way, he doesn’t mind taking what Renji has to offer. He’s more than happy to lie back and let Renji do whatever he wants to him.

And it is so fucking good to have Kensei willingly surrender to  _ him _ of all people. This man, this rare new breed who terrifies the people who rule over them all, is so solid and sturdy. He’s made of iron, but Renji can make his spine arch off the bed like he’s lighter than air. Can make his toes curl, feet pointing out like a dancer. 

Renji still likes to bite Kensei, out of some selfish desire to have him every which way. To hear Kensei’s grunts and groans underneath his teeth. And sometimes Renji can tell from the expression on his face that Kensei is just so fucking surprised, fucking  _ winded _ by the idea that someone would want him this way, spread out and pinned down, ready to be consumed.

Renji empathizes. He knows how it is, when you spend your entire life trying to be strong, the thing that scares you the most is someone seeing you flinch. That if someone smells weakness on you, they’ll dig into your soft underbelly and let you bleed out. 

Renji drags his teeth over Kensei’s stomach, touching his tattoo with the tip of his tongue. No one is getting to Kensei’s weak points. Renji won’t let them. 

Other times, Renji is not so selfless. It’s too tempting. And if Kensei is offering up his body to be used, then he can’t stop himself from indulging. Renji’s legs wrap around his hips so tightly and the only thing he can think about is getting that big, beautiful dick inside him. Pulling Kensei in deeper, fuller, faster.

He uses Kensei’s body like a toy, fucking himself over and over. Renji doesn’t even bother to touch himself, he’ll keep lifting himself up and slamming back down with his own cock freely bouncing in the air until he comes from Kensei’s dick inside him and nothing else. 

He wants all of Kensei in him. In his hands and his mouth and his ass. He wants to leave red welts in the shape of his kisses in Kensei’s skin, drag his nails down his back hard enough to raise red beads of blood like fine little rubies. Renji wants to use Kensei hard and eat him up and drink him down. 

It’s so shameless. It’s obscene. Renji shouldn’t get to feel so good so much. But when Kensei is letting Renji tear into him like he’s Renji’s last meal, it feels like it’s going to last forever.

“So, what’s the story with this anyway?” Renji drew his fingernail over the 69 tattoo, right between the scars from Kensei’s top surgery. “Do I finally get to know?”

It’s still too early spring to be comfortable, but they have Kensei’s bedroom window cracked open to let a cold breeze in. The room feels like a sauna but Renji still half-lies on top of Kensei, tracing his fingers over his scars and, of course, the infamous tattoo. 

Kensei has one arm looped around Renji’s waist, he looks down to watch Renji’s hand move across his skin. 

“S’ not really a story.” He takes Renji’s hand in his own and presses his fingertip against each number. “The six is for my name. The nine is for the 9th division.”

What a dork. “I bet that seemed like a really good idea at the time, huh.”

“Ugh. Don’t start with me.” Kensei’s face curls in a grimace, lip curling up over his teeth. “I promise, any joke you can think of, Shinji’s already made it at least a thousand times! Everyone thinks they’re a goddamn comedian.” 

“Alright, no hate!” Renji rests his chin on Kensei’s ab, relaxing into him. “Would you ever get more?”

“No. With my luck, people will just find a way to make it about sex in a hundred years again.”

Renji makes a noise between a laugh and a bark, and Kensei touches his hair. He’s gotten better about learning how to pet Renji’s hair, but he prefers just touching it, rolling the long strands between his fingers. 

“Your turn.” Kensei drops Renji’s lock of hair and cups his cheek, thumb sliding over his forehead. Tracing the black, bold, jagged lines of the tattoos on his eyebrows. “What’s the deal with these? I always wondered.” 

Renji lets Kensei’s fingers slide over his skin. “Mine? They’re from Zabimaru. She and I designed them, I guess.” 

Kensei’s touch goes down to the thunderbolt lines on the sides of Renji’s neck, then the blocky pattern on his neck. Renji realizes that it’s been a little while since he last got a new tattoo, he’s been busy these past few years. 

“It was, like, a statement of independence. Or spite. Whichever works. I knew I was never gonna fit in around the Seireitei, so I decided to embrace it. It was like saying I didn’t need anyone other than myself.” 

Kensei makes a thoughtful noise in his throat, and Renji feels it vibrate up his jaw. “Neither of us really thought it through, huh?”

“Fuck you, my tats are awesome.” 

“Yeah, awesome if you need a depressing-ass story to share.” Kensei’s eyes stare up at the ceiling, but his hands still glide perfectly over the arrow-angled stripes going down Renji’s arms. “Did you really feel like that? Like you could do it all on your own.” 

“I dunno. Probably not. I was pissed. I guess I still am.” Renji admits. “It’s, y’know, the kind of anger that doesn’t go away. It’s sewn into you, like a shard of glass jammed into your chest years ago and your skin healed over it, but you can still feel the edges cutting into you.” 

Yeah, spite is a better word for it, Renji thinks. Or envy. He stares at Kensei’s blank, bedroom wall. He doesn’t know how Kensei can wake up every day, look at that naked, wooden wall and not want to put his fist through it. Renji doesn’t know how he does it either. 

“It feels like every day you might do something stupid. Or like you’ve done something stupid already.”

Kensei doesn’t say anything for a while. Perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to say all of that out loud. After a moment of silence, Renji pokes him in the ribs. 

“Say something.”

“I was just thinking you’d make a good visored.” Kensei says evenly. 

* * *

Renji is awake while Kensei is still asleep, taking a marathon nap in the middle of the day. He sleeps like a bear, one arm over his chest, snoring loudly through his nose, and every day at 2 in the afternoon. This leaves Renji to his own devices, flipping through the latest issue of the Communication that was on Kensei’s coffee-table. 

The new _ Let’s Do Bankai _ got 4th page. Damn, Renji should start putting effort into these. 

The peaceful silence is broken by an urgent rapping at the front door. Renji rolls his eyes over to where Kensei is lying, dead to the world. 

“You want me to get that?” Renji says to his unconscious partner. Kensei’s breath continues to slowly rise and fall. There’s a soft frown on his face, looking grumpy even in his sleep. But it’s cute, too. Sometimes his foot twitches. Renji wonders if he has good dreams. 

Renji gets up and fastens the tie of his yukata around his waist. If he were a smarter man, he wouldn’t even bother. What’s Renji gonna do if it’s Shuuhei on the other side of this door? But there is a point where even he just doesn’t give a shit anymore. 

“Sup, Abarai?” Captain Hirako stands on the other side of the threshold, beaming in that too-wide way that he does. Captains Otoribashi and Yadomaru brace either side of him.

Renji attempts to shut the door, only to be blocked by Yadomaru’s foot. Drat. 

With the foreboding sense felt by deer staring down headlights, Renji reluctantly opens the door once again. “How can I help you, captains?” 

“You can start with invitin’ us in!”

“It’s not my quarters.” Renji mildly argues, even as he steps back from the visored crowding him and let them inside the main room. “Come in, I guess.”

“Thank you kindly, Lieutenant. Where is Kensei, by the way?” Rose beams pleasantly, smoothing down the frills of his collar. His piercing eyes scan Renji up and down, and Renji suddenly wishes he were not in his nightclothes in the middle of the day. “I hoped we would catch the two of you when he was… presentable.”

“He’s asleep.” Renji doesn’t know why he feels very naked in front of these three. Aside from the fact that he’s kind of half-naked right now. But also, these people are kind of like Kensei’s family, right? They’ve lived together with Kensei for a hundred years, and seem to take Renji’s intrusion a little more seriously than Mashiro does.

“At a half-past two, huh? You must be working him hard, stud.” Shinji winks at him, and Renji wonders what he’s done to deserve being god’s favorite mistake. “I’m kiddin’. Relax a little, kid, we didn’t come just to mess with ya’.”

Ah. What a relief.

Lisa sets her hands on her hips, her bespeckled eyes don’t seem to hover on Renji at all, instead sliding around the entire room as if she’s looking for something that only she can see. “We knew Kensei was never gonna give us a proper introduction to you. So we decided to initiate it ourselves. Aren’t we so considerate.”

“I’ll wake up Kensei.” Renji volunteers, not at all because he’s planning to escape out the bedroom window.

“Oh, let’s not disturb him!” Rose insists, wrapping his long, willowy arm over Renji’s shoulders. He’s a tall, wiry thing, so he can actually lean against Renji and have it be effective. “We can just sit and entertain ourselves here, can’t we? After all, you’re basically a part of the family now.”

“Yeah, and family doesn’t keep secrets.” Lisa drops down onto the couch next to where Rose positions him, throwing her legs over Renji’s lap. Shinji takes the other side. 

“So you can start by telling us everything about how you an’ Mr. Sunshine back there got together.” Shinji says while Rose takes out the old coffee pot that Kensei has in his cupboard. “Spare no embarrassing details.”

Kensei wakes up about fifteen minutes later, roused by the aroma of fresh coffee that is usually his signal to start the day. Speaking of which, did you know that if you put cream and sugar in coffee it can actually taste good? Renji is learning this for the first time, as well as how many times his heart can beat in a minute and what it’s like to hear time.

“--and that, my dear Renji, is how Hiyori got us forcibly removed from Woodstock, 1969.” Rose tops off Renji’s cup, his voice more dark and bitter than any coffee enthusiast has ever experienced. “The biggest performance of Jimi’s career, and I missed it! I was absolutely beside myself, and Jimi wasn’t too pleased either that I failed to meet him backstage after the set like I promised.” 

“Probably good that you didn’t go,” Lisa has her fingers pressed against her temple. It’s clear that she’s heard this story many, many times before. “If you had any more acid running through your system, I think your gigai would have started to melt.” 

Like Renji said, he doesn’t have to worry too much about how to talk to people. And the visored are apparently very easy to talk to. Or, rather, they’re very easy to be talked at by. Renji only has to volunteer a few ‘Damn’s and ‘That’s wild’s and the three captains have an easy time sharing the conversation amongst themselves. 

The bedroom door shuffles open and Kensei appears, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes before blinking hard at the scene in his living room. 

“How long have all of you been here?”

“Oh hello, Kensei! We just stopped in for a few moments.”

“A few moments, but it feels like the fun has been going on for hours.” Renji sips his coffee. He can hear his blood in his ears. 

Kensei looks down and pinches the bridge of his nose before looking back up. A vein bulges in his forehead. Renji knows it quite well, in his mind he likes to call it Fred. 

“Alright, everyone who’s not a 6’2 redhead get out now!” He points towards the door, and the other visored quickly gather themselves to vacate the premise before the full eruption of Mt. Muguruma can rain down upon them. 

As the door slams shut, Renji checks the abandoned coffee pot. Shit, emptied out. “Y’know, it’s funny. In a strange way, I’ll miss them.”

“Not after a hundred years you won’t.” Kensei grouses, stuffing his hands into his pockets. 

That sentence hits Renji right in the chest, but strangely enough it feels pretty good. Turning around and throwing an arm over the couch, he grins at Kensei. “Oh yeah? What are you implying?”

The realization of what Kensei said slowly dawns on his face, and Fred comes back. “You know what? Forget it. You’ll fit right in with those idiots.”

* * *

Things are quiet. Going well, Renji supposes? He’s never been in a relationship this long, he’s beginning to careen out of his comfort zone and into uncharted waters. Some days it feels so incredibly ordinary. Extra ordinary, if you will. 

Renji sees Kensei almost every day, he knows every fine detail of his face. The curve of his jaw, the way it tightens into a harsh angle when he’s upset and the way it softens after all the anger has drained out of him. The creases around his eyes, the way his mouth struggles to find the shape of a smile like the expression is a few phenomena every single time. 

It’s become such a regular part of Renji’s life, he almost doesn’t question it anymore. Doesn’t wonder how the hell the two of them got to this point. Other evenings, it’s all he can do to lie in the bed they share and stare at the ceiling thinking about it.

(He practices on those nights. Practices saying the thing he thinks that he wants to say. Renji watches Kensei’s chest rise and fall, the evening light of the moon filling every old cut and scar on his skin like dark waters. 

There’s such comfort in his presence that Renji is unfamiliar with. He never figured out how to read Kensei’s emotions, to be entirely sure what was going through his mind, but Renji is okay with that. 

Renji practices saying the words he wants to say. Practices how to make them with his mouth, those strange and alien sentiments and how they feel in his chest. It’s just three words, right? They won’t make him feel different after he says them for real, right? 

He just. He needs time to work up to it. To say them when Kensei is awake instead of sound asleep.)

* * *

Renji owes Kensei a lot. For his companionship and his company and his affection. And, yeah, his trust, which is a rare commodity to earn from the visored. Which is exactly why Renji tithers and dithers and fusses over what he has to do next. 

There’s a knot of anxiety in his stomach when Renji sits across from Shuuhei at the table, he immediately starts tapping on the wood surface of the table with his nails. 

“-Abarai.” Shuuhei’s voice breaks through the fog of Renji’s thoughts, and he has no idea how long the older lieutenant has been trying to talk to him. “Are you okay?”

“Oh. Yeah. For sure.” Renji answers, like a liar. 

His nails are still tapping on the table, and Shuuhei is giving him this look like he wants to tell Renji to knock it off but restrains himself. That’s one of the elements their friendship is built on, forgiving each other's weird little quirks and such. On the surface layer, neither of them seem like the type to have anxious tics or nervous habits, and that’s because there’s a certain amount of mental lifting that goes into suppressing those behaviors. Together they can be as weird and twitchy and messy as they like.

Except for right now, where Renji feels like he’s really going above and beyond when it comes to nervous twitchiness. 

He chose this tea shop for a reason. Their group of friends had been coming here since they were students, back when the group was just Rukia, Momo, Izuru, Shuuhei and himself. It’s comfortable and casual. And if Renji makes a scene here on this day, it won’t be the first time.

“Listen, Hisagi,” Renji begins, and then corrects himself. “Shuuhei.”

Shuuhei straightens in his seat, giving Renji great attentiveness now. Renji resists the urge to chew on his nails.

“I wanted to tell you this for a bit. Like, a long time. But I didn’t, because I knew it was gonna be super weird. Not because of you! Because of me. I’m going to make this weird.”

“Renji, hold on.” Shuuhei stops him. “I think I know where this is going.”

Renji doubts that, but he’s always ready to be surprised.

“I know you might feel... Awkward about it. It’s completely understandable. When two people who are close to you initiate a romantic relationship with each other, there’s inevitably some sense of being a third wheel.” Shuuhei says slowly, choosing his words carefully. He sounds so calm and confident, Renji is tempted to relax. “But I don’t want you to worry about that. Me dating Izuru isn’t going change anything about our friendship, and I don’t intend for it to come between you and Izuru either.”

Ah, so close but no cigar. Renji leans back in his seat and has to rearrange his thoughts. “No-- I mean, that’s cool and all! But I already knew about that, kinda. Congrats, though! I know you’ve been nuts about Kira for ages.” 

Shuuhei looks nonplussed, probably because his very thoughtful sentiments didn’t land the way he wanted them to. But also probably because now Renji has thrown him for a real loop. 

Well. If you’re gonna go to a festival you might as well stay for the fireworks. 

“I’m kind of dating your captain.”

“Kind of?” 

“I am dating your captain. Kira and I figured that part out.” Renji winces. “Don’t freak out.”

Shuuhei blinks. His hands are around the cup of jasmine tea in front of him, rolling the earthenware cup between his palms. “Oh. I already knew about that. Though yeah, I was kinda waiting around for when one of you was gonna tell me in person, but whatever. It’s your personal business.”

Once again, Renji recalculates the many thoughts buzzing around in his brain. He runs through about four or five interactions of how to say the same thing before just saying. “How?”

The frown that Shuuhei gives him could scare lesser and smarter men than Renji into mental submission. “Please, give me a little credit. You’re hanging around Kensei all the time, flirting with each other and shit. Didn’t you think I was going to cotton on eventually?”

“Really, though.” Renji pushes. 

The frown deepens. Shuuhei sighs a very frustrated sigh. “Kuna saw you coming out of Kensei’s quarters and told me. Izuru put together the rest of the pieces for me.”

“Ah.”

“But I would have figured it out on my own soon enough anyways!”

Renji chuckles in a way that is only 70% forced, although Shuuhei is anything but kidding. He doesn’t really trust Shuuhei’s nonchalance, because although Shuuhei is just as good at lying to people as Kensei and Mashiro are, he’s much better at lying to himself. 

“So… what? You’re not mad or anything?”

“Why would I be mad? I’m not going to pretend that it isn’t weird for me. Thinking about my friend and my boss dating each other is strange, but if it makes you happy then what does it matter what I think?” Shuuhei sips his tea, sounding too casual and too collected. 

Renji frowns. “Well, you can be a little upset. I’m basically dating your dad, kinda.”

“Kensei’s  _ not _ my dad!” Shuuhei puts his cup down to snap, showing a little bit of those teeth and gums that Renji knew he was holding back. “Okay, we have a more… layered relationship than most lieutenants and captains do. But he’s just my boss. I don’t know why people keep assuming that he’s some kind of father-figure to me.”

“When he first came back to the Ninth, there was a betting-pool on whether you were secretly his illegitimate son.” Renji tells him. Best 50,000 yen he ever earned. “That’s how alike you two are.”

“We are not alike at all.” Shuuhei argues, holding up his hand so he can start counting off on his fingers. “Kensei’s foul-tempered, stubborn, tactless, hot-headed--” 

Renji stares at him. “Yes.”

Shuuhei’s entire face seems to shine with annoyance, narrowed eyes and lip subtly twitching. “You’re so ungrateful, you know that? Here I am, handing you a perfectly good excuse to make it less weird for you to date my captain, and you’re throwing it right in my face by making it even weirder.”

“Sorry,” Renji has a hard time taking Shuuhei seriously when he gets like this, all worked up and fussy.

And yeah, he’s right that Renji has veered off of trying to be gentle about this straight into making it harder than it needs to be. It’s not his place to pry into Shuuhei’s dearth of complicated emotions and drag them to the surface to balk at. But he thinks that, at the very least, Kensei would appreciate Renji’s attempt to clear the air. Skip all pretenses and facades and shit.

“Look, you’re right. And it’s none a’ my business.” Renji starts, tapping his nails again. “I just don’t wanna, like, make working together more complicated for you. I like Kensei a lot, but you’re one of my closest friends. I don’t wanna fuck that up.”

“Thanks,” Shuuhei sighs. “I get it. Really.”

He watches Shuuhei’s face, his gray eyes that study the surface of his tea. His eye doesn’t fully open on one side, the side with the scars that mark the anniversary of when they first met. 

Just like Izuru, and Rukia, and Kensei, Shuuhei carries way more than he needs to. It’s enough to sometimes make Renji feel guilty for trying to be happy, he wishes he could pick up all of their burdens and put them up on his own shoulders. 

“He’s not like you thought he’d be, is he?”

Shuuhei doesn’t wince. His face doesn’t do that, it just tightens like a coil being pulled apart before snapping back together.

“... no, he isn’t. Or maybe I didn’t really think about what I thought he would be.” Shuuhei stops, lips tightened in a grim line. Thinking in silence for a long time as he scripts what he wants to say, while Renji patiently waits. “I’m glad I met him, though. I mean, met him for real, the second time. But I was angry at him for a while at first, for being the way he is and for--” 

He stops again. Chews the inside of his cheek. Starts again.

“For not being Tousen.” 

Renji’s nails are pushing little half-moon indents into the lacquered surface of the table. He hasn’t talked about Tousen with Kensei. He’s barely talked about him with Shuuhei. Enough to know it’s a sensitive subject, one that he doesn’t really understand. 

But he doesn’t have to understand. At least, y’know, not right this very second. But yeah, shit’s complicated. 

“Fuck. Sorry, I didn’t mean to--”

Shuuhei shrugs his apology off. “You’re fine. It was gonna come up. The point is, I have a lot of admiration and friendship for Ke- for Captain Muguruma. But there’s always gonna be stuff we don’t see eye-to-eye on.”

Finally, Shuuhei allows himself the briefest of smiles, like a bolt of lighting across his face. “That’s just how family is, right?”

Renji grins, feeling some of that miasma of tension starting to lift off of him.

“I just didn’t want you to be one of those things.” Shuuhei finishes. “So, look. Yeah, it’s weird. And I’m still… processing the two of you being so close. And I don’t need all the details. But it’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He didn’t know that he needed to hear that. For Renji, concepts like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are definitely gray areas. People who believe in such concrete definitions, who never change their values or compromise their ideals for anything, are just naïve, or possibly just stupid. All the things that Renji does that are wrong are, in some way, a little bit right. All of the things that he does that are right are at least little wrong. It’s very confusing. 

Renji’s right about this, though. About how much he cares about his friends. About what kind of man Kensei is, and the fact that Renji lo-- that he _ loooo--  _ that he feels very strongly about him. He feels… Much. He’s right and he isn’t wrong at all. 

“I would appreciate it, however, if you guys kept being mostly discreet around the barracks.” Shuuhei adds.

“We can certainly try.”

“And if you guys don’t mess around during work hours.”

“Now you’re just asking for a lot.

* * *

Today is Baseball. 

Aikawa bought the tickets for them, and Renji offers to pay for his, even though he does not even know if his money is any good in the human world. Kensei tells him to stop worrying about it, which has never helped before. But today is a special day. 

Renji is excited, but it’s not really for the sport that he knows nothing about. He’s more taken with a curious desire to observe Kensei in the World of the Living. Renji is a mere tourist in this world, but Kensei called it home for a century. And when he came back to Soul Society, he took bits and pieces back with him. He wasn’t willing to let go. 

Speaking of being a tourist, though…

“I don’t really have any casual clothes for my gigai,” Renji looks down at his shihakusho. “Not good ones, anyway. I just wear what the R&D department gives me. Or--” Wince. Pause for dramatic effect. “Borrow something from Urahara’s.”

Kensei needs no further details. “Don’t worry about that. I think Love kept some of my stuff at our hide-out, you can borrow my old clothes.”

Ah, yes. A very normal solution to this problem. Renji has normal feelings about this, and they don’t make his face feel fuzzy and hot at all. 

Kensei’s old jeans are too loose around Renji’s hips and too short in the ankles. Which, again, evoke only the most normal of feelings. He doesn’t think he’s ever worn clothing as an adult that was too large for him, but the muscle shirt and gray hoodie that Kensei loans him get very close. 

(While getting dressed, Renji quickly brings the soft fuzzy inside of the hoodie to his face and inhales. It mostly just smells like it’s been in storage for a few years, he doesn’t think he catches a scent of Kensei at all. But he can nearly pretend that Kensei had just been wearing it the other day and let Renji have it, a soft, protective, intimate embrace.

Renji Little Bitch Hours are in full swing today, apparently.)

They don’t spend enough time at the warehouse for Renji to look around, or even to meet the remaining three visored who turned down the puny, withered little olive branch the Gotei offered for them to come back to work. Kensei is being way too fussy about making sure they get to the stadium in time for the opening pitch. 

It’s pretty cute, watching Kensei get excited in his own, weird way. He vibrates with anticipation, checking and rechecking his pocket for the tickets like they might have disappeared since he checked them two minutes ago. 

He’s so focused, he doesn’t pay any mind to the huge crowd of people blocking them in on either side. Although when Renji starts to lag behind, Kensei drags him by the sleeve. 

“Don’t wander off. I don’t intend t’ explain to anybody that someone walked away with you.” Kensei says, ignoring the fact that it’s borderline impossible to lose all red-headed, 6’2 of Renji in a crowd. 

“It’s just,” Renji feels lightheaded. The flashing lights, the sounds coming over the loudspeakers, the smells of fried food all hit him at once and then over and over. “A lot.”

Kensei’s boots stop underneath him, eyes flicking back to Renji with pressed concern. “Hey. You gonna be alright?”

Calliope music blasts out of the speakers, beating out a cheerful tune that floats above everyone’s heads. It’s a little creepy, kind of ominously scary, but also exciting. There’s adrenaline thrumming in his veins. 

“Yeah,” Renji grins. He can see sunlight through the gates, pouring the crowd out into the stands and overlooking an impossibly green field. “I like it.”

He doesn’t know what to expect, on account of Kensei not telling Renji anything about baseball. And yes, perhaps Renji could have done the research on his own, but he is nothing if not a man who lives on the edge. 

Renji and Kensei spend about 4 minutes decoding the locations of their seats on their tickets compared to the various gates and instructional signs. After what feels like ages, the two of them end up sitting in stiff, plastic seats overlooking the baseball diamond. The inclined set up of the stands gives Renji this unnerving feeling that he’s about to fall forward into the field. 

That peculiar music starts up again. Kensei leans back against the cold plastic of his chair, and the metal fittings exhale loudly underneath him. Renji wonders how long it’s been since he got to do this, just enjoy something big and fun. Without worrying about a world-ending war or being hunted by his former allies for being a hollowfied experiment. 

Renji spreads his arms out around the back of Kensei’s seat, casual enough at first glance but close enough to rest his hand on Kensei’s shoulder. “You excited?” 

“First game of the season.” Kensei says, as if that’s an answer that Renji is supposed to understand. Then the players in their peculiar uniforms take their positions, the music swells, and Kensei’s face lights up with intense concentration. 

It’s absolutely beautiful. 

  
  


As it turns out, baseball isn’t…  _ quite _ as amazing as Kensei had advertised.

Look, it’s entirely likely that Renji just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand the rules, though Kensei throws in some sporadic explanation when something exciting apparently happens. 

It’s just a little slow for Renji’s tastes, not lightning fast like he finds soccer to be. Kensei says that baseball is ‘a thinking man’s game’, so perhaps it makes sense that the elegance escapes Renji. 

It’s a little too chilly to be comfortable, and the gray sky above threatens to sprinkle rain. All of the food is overpriced, and it’s so noisy Renji can’t hear himself think. 

But man, the way that Kensei leans in right before a pitch. He shouts along with the rest of the crowd when the ball flies across the field. There’s a single instant where the bat makes contact, and crack rings out like lightning shaking the stadium before the ball soars over the furthest wall, and Kensei squeezes Renji’s hand so hard it might bruise. 

By the ninth inning it’s become dark, and the huge lights over the stadium throw glowing white lights over everything in sight. The game comes to an end, punctuated by fireworks to ring in the start of a new season. Beautiful gemstone reds and blues and greens. Kensei kisses Renji under the exploding sky, thundering like spring thunderstorms. 


End file.
